Streisand Effect?

"The studio releasing Alex Gibney’s new Elon Musk documentary Musk is finding itself unable to buy an ad on the biggest social platforms.

YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram and Facebook owner Meta are all declining to run the trailer for Musk, along with X itself, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

That last one is perhaps understandable, given its owner. But the rejection by the other platforms has taken distributor Bleecker Street by surprise, and it is internally scrambling to understand why the ad has been rejected, according to a person familiar with the company’s processes who is not authorized to talk about them publicly."

Dude makes a documentary that essentially states "unhinged, unaccountable billionaires have way too much power in our society".

Then he tries to buy ads for it on social media sites that are... surprise! ...run by unhinged, unaccountable billionaires who all post to the same group chats as the dude the documentary is about, but they won't sell him the ad space, which kinda proves his point.

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Tab Clearing...

• The Nuclear (Again) Future


• You have no idea how weird some of the key people around the AI flagpole really are.


• China's oil stockpiling pays dividends.

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Ominous Sign?

There's gonna be an AI generated Bitcoin "biographical thriller" movie starring Gal Godot?

I better make sure I don’t have any crypto left in any digital sofa cushions because, uh, this has a very “Getting stock tips from the shoeshine boy” vibe.

It's about frickin' time.

I’m rarely in a Walmart and every time I am, I’m surprised anew by their archaic checkout. I mean, I literally used Apple Pay to buy an obsidian knife from the flint knapper in Pioneer Village at the Indiana State Fair the other day.

“What do you mean I gotta actually take my card out of my wallet and stick it in the machine with my hands like it’s 2015 up in here? I used my wristwatch to pay a guy in bib overalls for a stone knife last Wednesday, for heaven's sake!”

Resin-filled cholla hilt and gold sheen obsidian blade.

Well, Wally World is finally saying they're going to bring touchless payments, including Apple Pay, to their stores by the end of this year. Better late than never, I reckon.

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Tab Clearing...

• What a Monopoly vendor learned when making things in America.


• Flock pitched a plan to turn Uber and Lyft drivers into roving surveillance vehicles.


• Hello Local Business, your AI ads are costing you customers.

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I'm good, thanks...

"What is X Money? The new service on X basically provides banking and financial services for paying X Premium and Premium+ subscribers right within the app. X Money includes peer-to-peer payments and money transfers within the X platform, as well as a deposit account. Users will also receive "the X card," a physical Visa debit card for ATM withdrawals and in-person transactions."

Now you'll be able to pay for your Grok-generated revenge porn without even leaving the app!

Automotive History

Is the Cybertruck a bigger flop than the Edsel? Possibly so.

Houthis in the News Again

The Houthi announcement that they'd blockade Saudi tankers from transiting the Bab-el-Mandab has sent oil prices back toward the $100/barrel mark again.

Earlier this week, the Iran-aligned Houthis announced they had expanded their campaign against maritime traffic by targeting Saudi oil shipments through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the key chokepoint on the Red Sea, through which Saudi Arabia has re-directed most of its crude oil shipments to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.

China-bound tankers appear to move through Bab el-Mandeb, but some others, including Denmark-flagged products tanker Torm Innovation, have made U-turns in the Red Sea and are now heading north toward the Suez Canal.

Despite the Houthi blockade, “two China-crewed, China-bound tankers loaded at Yanbu and cleared Bab al-Mandeb apparently untouched,” maritime intelligence firm Windward said on Thursday.

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You probably weren't doomering hard enough...

Latest forecasts don't envision petroleum traffic to return to anything like normal through all of 2027.

Tab Clearing...

• "Quick! Announce talks are re-starting before the markets open this morning!"


• Ghost Bikes


• Do the Euros have the stomach for a fight?

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Tab Clearing...

• Your favorite gadgets are getting way more expensive again. Thanks AI bubble!


• Cop caught on video stalking a woman by using a license plate reader.


• Waymo robotaxi delivers teen hooligans to the cops.

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The Dumbest Timeline...

The Sunday morning political talking head shows were abuzz with the latest rounds of high explosive tag in the Persian Gulf: Iran drones some ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the US retaliates by striking targeting radars and missile & drone storage facilities, then Iran launches missiles at US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, and we launch more airstrikes on Iran...

Then suddenly this morning, before sunup, the story breaks on the Wall Street Journal's site: "U.S. and Iran Agree to Halt Days of Fighting Over Strait" and it's all over the teewee news this morning.

The vibe here is so obviously "Quick! Before the markets open!" because Wall Street traders have the object permanence of a toddler playing peek-a-boo. "Where'd mommy go? Oh no! Mommy's gone forever!", except in this case mommy is the Iranian ability to interdict traffic in the Strait.

We are entering a new phase of the war where fighting will primarily occur between Friday evening and Monday morning EDT.

Tab Clearing...

• If your laptop or phone is getting long in the tooth, the best time to upgrade is three months ago: How the AI boom is driving an inflationary surge in consumer electronic prices.


• The guys with the Roman statue PFPs don't know jack about the classics they claim to love.


• War Films and the Experience of War.

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*headdesk*

Me: *spends literal decades on the internet trying to explain to people that there’s not a dial labeled ”GAS PRICES” on the Resolute desk*

POTUS, yesterday:

Everything from beer cans to party balloons...

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, to say nothing of damage to some of the world's largest smelters, has aluminum prices skyrocketing.

Aluminium prices are at a four-year high, up more than 25% this year, as war in the Middle East and a blocked Strait of Hormuz choke off nearly a quarter of the world’s seaborne metal supply.

Not just aluminum, though. The global helium supply has been kneecapped as well, which will impact everything from microchip manufacturing to MRIs.

The war has also upended markets for products extracted from natural gas. Among the most critical is helium, an odorless element produced as a byproduct of natural gas extraction. Before the war, Qatar supplied roughly one-third of the world’s helium.

Chip manufacturers use it to cool machines that etch circuits onto silicon wafers. Pharmaceutical companies rely on it for quality checks of their products. In magnetic resonance imaging machines, helium cools superconducting magnets.

I've already had a couple people tell me that even though prices on everything from portable electronics to memory cards for cameras is up, if I have any I need to buy, I shouldn't be waiting for Christmas because it's going to be a year minimum once the shooting stops for things to even start getting back to normal.

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Tab Clearing...

• Big tech data mining is endangering US troops, but big tech dollars own too much of the government to do anything about it.


• Was your country at war with Japan for 102 years?


• Skyrocketing beef prices endangering famous Texas BBQ joints.

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"You Have 60 Days"

You'll note that the video was published on April 8th.

Like clockwork, comes this AutoZone memo...

Penny wise, pound foolish

Between costs associated with Iran and various hijinks in Latin America, as well as shelling out $1.1 billion dollars (and counting!) for National Guard troops to stand around DC Metro stations, bored and scrolling their smart phones, the Army is facing a budget shortfall of something like six billion bucks.

So they're slashing training costs to the bone for the rest of the fiscal year because that's not important for "lethality", I guess.

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Tab Clearing...

• Roberts: "Hey, you can't Dred a Scott without Plessying a few Fergusons."


• Second tallest megatsunami ever recorded happened in Alaska last year.


• Rain on the Scarecrow, Blood on the Plow v2.0

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Pain at the Pump

Gas in Indianapolis went up another forty cents overnight. Statewide average is now $4.80 a gallon for regular, here in Indy it's $4.99 pretty much everywhere. Monday it was $3.99 a gallon, and that was already higher than it’s been in years, and now it’s gone up another 25%, with more increases incoming. Bobbi filled her tank with the required premium earlier in the week and it set her back over eighty bucks.

Bring this up on social media and you'll hear from your friends in London or Oslo how that's cheap compared to what they're used to, but so what?

First, people structure their budgets and lives around the prices and wages where they live, not halfway around the globe. Second, at this rate people are going to add a GoFundMe to fill their tank in addition to the one they already have for hospital bills. (To which your Euro friend replies "Hospital bills?")

Public transit, health insurance, lengthy suburban commutes, student loan payments, et cetera et cetera... It’s why comparing how many drachmas per dram gas costs between countries is kinda pointless.