MisbehavingEconomist

Behavioural Economics (Herb Simon school)
Complex choices in education under Shacklian uncertainty
+ backyard sustainability & produce

[MisbehavingEconomist @MisbehavingE]

@onechancefreedm US is being suckered by a long con. Iran will use this to take out the Gulf States which will then be absorbed by Saudi Arabia. US gets ejected from Iraq which gets split between Iran & Turkey. Creating a Saudi/Turkish/Irainian troika controlling all Middle East oil & gas.

[vx-underground @vxunderground]

Meta is still having some minor security problems. Instagram is currently exposing phone numbers and email addresses associated with accounts when trying to perform a password reset

This is cool and badass because everyone is sharing Mark Zuckerbergs phone number right now

[The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter]

BREAKING: Iran is exercising full operational control over the Strait of Hormuz today with over 100 IRGC Navy speedboats visible in a major formation along their designated route 55km northwest of Qeshm Island, per Sentinel-2 satellite imagery.

[vx-underground @vxunderground]

> be Zuckerberg
> needs AI everywhere (apparently)
> lays off a bunch of employees
> replaces with AI
> fast forward
> AI is dog shit
> AI tricked into stealing accounts
> try to fix
> fail like 5 times
> product now leaking CEOs PII

AI truly is the future, wow

[Yet another commodity guy @tleilax___]

El Nino update. Godzilla is coming.

Most of the world will see top quartile temperatures over Jul/Aug/Sep, which is peak vegetative growth season globally for grains, half the world oilseeds and also for sugar and rice in Asia. That means more evapotranspiration and stress on crops.

India and South-East Asia will also likely see their weakeast monsoon rains in decades.

This is happening while there's a shortage of fertilizers.

[Tracy Shuchart (𝒞𝒽𝒾 ) @chigrl]

We are not even close to being prepared for all the new energy demand.....
data centers are "unpredictable and potentially destabilizing force ​on grids already under pressure from rising demand" >>>

Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

Several ​large data centers and crypto facilities planning to connect to the Texas power grid ahead of ‌peak summer demand have failed key reliability tests, raising the risk of power outages just as electricity use hits its seasonal high, according to the state grid operator.

The rapid expansion of data centers processing vast amounts of data for artificial intelligence and crypto mining is ​straining power grids across the United States.

Unlike traditional industrial customers, which tend to draw electricity steadily and ​predictably, data centers are engineered to cut their connection to the grid at the first sign ⁠of trouble to protect their equipment and keep services running. That makes them an unpredictable and potentially destabilizing force ​on grids already under pressure from rising demand. (Reuters)

[Mohamed A. El-Erian @elerianm]

From John Plender's FT column:
"At the same time, Treasury funding is increasingly reliant on shorter-term securities, which means constant rollover risk. With US public debt approaching its highest ever level, this combination sounds like the very definition of a non-geopolitical financial chokepoint, with vulnerability to shocks. It also suggests there are now systemic risks in the Treasury market."
#economy #markets #bonds

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔Blackstone just capped withdrawals from its $79 billion flagship private credit fund BCRED at 5% of shares after redemption requests hit 10% in Q2. That's up from a then-record 7.9% in Q1. Switzerland's Partners Group is also restricting redemptions in a European private equity fund and warned the withdrawals are now spreading from private credit into private equity.
Pimco's CIO Daniel Ivascyn said last week that higher losses are coming and the industry is in "the first sustained default or loss cycle in many, many years." Blackstone's COO called the withdrawal caps "a feature, not a bug."

My Take
Redemption requests went from 7.9% to 10% in one quarter. Blackstone covered Q1 by raising their cap and tapping employee capital, and still had a net outflow. That's not sustainable. Partners Group is seeing the same pressure in Europe and used the word nobody in private markets wants to hear. The withdrawals are spreading. Credit into equity. A $150 billion firm warned its own investors that this isn't isolated.

Private credit has quietly financed a lot of the AI buildout. SoftBank's $40 billion bridge facility, leveraged data center deals, the infrastructure bets behind every hyperscaler's capex forecast. If the funds behind those bets start gating withdrawals because investors want out faster than the assets can cover, the capital pipeline that supports AI spending tightens fast. SpaceX just launched the largest IPO in history. Anthropic filed its S-1. Both need public markets to pick up where private capital is pulling back. The private side of this market is showing stress at the exact moment the public side is being asked to absorb trillions in new AI valuations. That's a bad combination in my eyes.

Hedgie🤗

[MenchOsint @MenchOsint]

As suggested yesterday, the US unsuccessfully tried to escort Oil Tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, risking the lives of the mariners for media victories.

Overnight, 4 oil tankers guided by the US Air Force, without coordination with the IRGC Navy, attempted to exit the Strait of Hormuz.

One of the tankers was hit and stopped, and the other vessels turned back.

Then at 2h30, US drones hit a telecommunications mast in Qeshm and a radar in Sirik with two projectiles.

In response, IRGC targeted Ali al-Salem air base in Kuwait and the the US Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain with Ballistic Missiles.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

While we get threatened with hosepipe bans whenever there’s a week of sunshine, it is estimated that Al data centres will consume water equal to the needs of 1.3 billion people by 2030.

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

There's more: "Meta’s Big Tech rivals such as Microsoft and Amazon are also likely to be considering their own stock sales" - FT

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

IRAN THREATENS FULL STRAIT OF HORMUZ SHUTDOWN AFTER MISSILE ATTACKS ON U.S. BASES

#BREAKING

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

IRAN GUARDS SAY TARGETED US BASES IN GULF: AFP

IRANIAN STATE TV CLAIMS MISSILE STRIKES ON U.S. BASES IN KUWAIT AND BAHRAIN

IRGC CLAIMS IT FIRED ON FOUR TANKERS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ

[Meriwether Farms @MeriwetherFarms]

BREAKING: USDA confirms a SECOND New World Screwworm case in Texas, 5.6 miles from the first case

[MisbehavingEconomist @MisbehavingE]

@SincDavidson Australian universities are inefficient because 'executive' level (VCs, DVCs etc) has no 'skin in the game'.

[International Cyber Digest @IntCyberDigest]

❗️🚨 An Israeli company has backdoored hundreds of millions of households through countless Smart TV apps, and they're quietly turning Samsung and LG TVs into exit nodes for AI web-scraping. Your TV is relaying strangers' web traffic from your home IP, your bandwidth, your address attached to whatever those scraping jobs touch.

Roku, Fire TV and Google TV banned the practice. Samsung and LG didn't. The culprit is Bright Data's proxy SDK, which rides inside Tizen and webOS apps, 200+ on webOS alone. Datacenter IPs get blocked, home IPs don't.

Include Security reverse-engineered the SDK and found its relay protocol has no message signing, authentication, or device attestation. Their words: less secure than typical malware command-and-control.

To make things worse, they found that in iOS the relay tunnel binds straight to the physical network interface, so it routes around any VPN the user is running.

Bright Data's config also ships per-country tiers. Devices in Uzbekistan and Oman are cleared to relay down to 1% battery, with data caps up to 60x the worldwide default.

Before the BaCkDoOrEd replies land: technically you agreed. In practice you were enrolled into a global proxy network you were never given the information to refuse. And these exit nodes drag down your IP's reputation, potentially leaving you with blocks from providers.

[Faytuks Network @FaytuksNetwork]

Sirens are now sounding in Bahrain.

[Flightradar24 @flightradar24]

Flights bound for Kuwait are currently holding or diverting amid reports of Iranian strikes. https://t.co/98oT8bjr4Z

[MisbehavingEconomist @MisbehavingE]

Mainstream politicians are leading Australia into a Farage-style earthquake: 'Pauline Hanson’s insurgent populist movement says it now has more signed up, fully paid members than either Labor or the Coalition.'
https://t.co/OOsVWXbI13

[JustDario @DarioCpx]

Told ya this was coming