I Want This So Badly

This is positively brilliant. 

Are there online plans for this? 

Thank You Letitia James

The New York Attorney General just ordered NYU Langone Health to resume providing transgender treatment to teens.

That's one way to make the cowards and the hypocrites do the right thing.

The New York attorney general’s office has ordered a major Manhattan hospital to resume providing puberty-blocking medication and hormone treatments to transgender adolescents, just two weeks after the hospital had stopped doing so.

The hospital, NYU Langone Health, had closed its Transgender Youth Health Program after the federal government threatened to pull federal funding from hospitals that provided gender-transition treatments for adolescents. For more than a year, the Trump administration has sought to prevent hospitals from helping adolescents transition, asserting that many of the children are impressionable and confused and that the medical treatments maim and sterilize them. In response, many clinics and hospitals in the United States have scaled back or stopped providing gender-related treatments to children.

In a letter to the hospital, a senior official in the attorney general’s office raised the question of whether NYU Langone’s action violated New York’s anti-discrimination laws, by barring a single category of patients from receiving medications that others could access. The official, Darsana Srinivasan, who leads the office’s health care bureau, wrote in the letter that puberty blockers and hormone treatments remained available to pediatric patients who were not transgender.

“New York state laws prohibit discrimination based on a patient’s membership in a protected class,”

Today in Tech Bro Psychopaths

Block (formerly Square) CEO Jack Dorsey donned a baseball cap with "Love" lettered on the front while announcing that he was firing 4,000 employees and replacing them with AI.

Next time, just be honest, wear a hat with a Totenkopf. 

Twitter co-founder and Block (formerly Square) CEO Jack Dorsey ain’t your typical corporate suit. For one, he doesn’t always wear them. He brings up “world peace” when endorsing his favorite tech like crypto. Nobody really knows where he lives. He meditates frequently and sports a longish beard. He comes off as more New Age guru than CEO.

So perhaps it was very on brand that, when Dorsey announced he was firing 4,000 employees at Block, he was wearing a hat that said “LOVE” on it in prominent lettering.

Was the “LOVE” hat was tone-deaf? That may seem a silly consideration compared to the broader concern of Dorsey eliminating around 40 percent of his company’s workforce, especially given his explanation that AI motivated the cuts.

There is something very wrong at the core of Silly-Con valley.

Getting Your War On

Most alarmingly, we are now seeing that the US Military officer corps is rife with Talibaptist Jihadists who see this war as a path to the rapture.

This needs to be removed from the military root and branch, and not just because is contrary to good faith and discipline, but because religious crusades always end up extremely brutal and cruel, even by the standards of the day.

A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.

From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, the MRFF told me Monday night.

The MRFF is keeping the complainants anonymous to prevent retribution by the Defense Department. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to my request for comment.

One complainant identified themselves as a non-commissioned officer (NCO) in a unit currently outside the Iran combat zone but in Ready-Support status, deployable at any time. The NCO said they were Christian and emailed the MRFF on behalf of 15 troops, including at least 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew. (Full email printed below.)

The NCO wrote to the MRFF that their commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

If you think that making war will lead to the 2nd coming, you have no limits.

Espect to see atrocitys that make My Lai look like acakd-walk.

Also, we now have confirmation that it was the United States that blew up the girls' school in Iran, and what's more, the target was chosen by AI.

The Iranian elementary school building where scores of children were killed as the U.S. and Israel began their massive aerial campaign was on a U.S. target list and may have been mistaken for a military site, multiple people familiar with the strike told The Washington Post.

The deadly attack occurred in the first few hours of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran — just as parents were hurrying to the two-story schoolhouse to take their kids home to safety — and killed at least 175 people, many of them children, according to Iranian state media.

It is still not clear why the building was hit, but one person familiar with the school strike said the building had been identified as a factory and had been an approved strike target. A second person familiar said there was an arms depot target located in the same area and did not know if the United States hit the school by mistake, or if U.S. officials had the wrong intelligence and thought the building was the arms depot.

………

According to five people familiar with the issue, both the Israeli and U.S. militaries are using Palantir’s Maven to conduct operations. Maven is a battlefield intelligence platform. The U.S. version is powered in part by Anthropic’s AI, Claude.

(emphasis mine)

Well, now we know why Anthropic wanted to restrict the Pentagon's use of their technology. They knew that something like this would happen.

Unlike Palantir, I think that the folks at Anthropic understood that using their technology was reckless and its use could land them in the Hague. 

This is not a surprise. 

Also, it appears that SecDef Hegseth shut down a Pentagon program to minimize civilian casualties, because ……… I don't know. ……… Maybe the drunkard thinks that killing little kids is macho?

On a tactical level, it appears that Iran forces have been extremely successful in striking US and Israeli radars and similar systems, so much so that commercial satellite surveillance firm Planet Labs has been pressured into turning off access to imagery from the region.

It turns out that Trump and the Pentagon do have their limits though.  They were very miffed at Israel's targeting Iran's oil infrastructure.  

So it IS all about the oil, huh? 

Speaking of oil, it's above $100.00 a barrel, and Trump has decided to release 172,000,000 barrels from the already-depleated US oil reserves.

I don't think that it will do much, as 20% of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran has attacked least 6 ships in the past 24 hours in the Strait.

Oil is going nowhere but up. 

Even more concerning is the fact that the US bombed an Iranian desalination plant, and Iran Iran retaliated by striking a desalination plant in Bahrain.

Both acts are unequivocally war crimes, and serious damage could result in the collapse of whole cities in a matter of just a few weeks.

Well, that's it for now.  Pleasant dreams. 

Your Delayed Jeffrey Epstein Day

I know, why focus on Epstein when there is a war on.

Because the purpose of the war is to distract us from our pedophil oligarcs, that's why. 

First, the DoJ has finally gotten around to released the interviews where a woman alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her and beat her up.  

They claimed that it was not released the information because of a, "Coding error," Yeah, sure.

A woman who claims she was abused as a minor by both Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump has given the FBI vivid accounts that include aspects of her life corroborated by The Post and Courier through public records.

Her alleged encounter with Trump sometime around 1984 remains unproven, and the White House on March 7 said there is “zero credible evidence” that the woman’s account is true.

Using archived government records and news accounts, The Post and Courier found that the woman provided verifiable details to agents about her family background and its legal entanglements. She offered the name of an Epstein business associate on Hilton Head Island who became a central figure in the drama, with specifics that are reflected in public records.

The accounts describe an early phase in the mid-1980s of potential criminal conduct by Epstein that involved sexual activities with minors on Hilton Head. The alleged victim told the FBI she was under constant pressure from him to recruit more girls there to “come party” with him and his “disgusting” older friends. The incidents almost always involved drugs and alcohol and turned violent with hair-pulling and beatings, according to the woman.

………

In her account about Trump, she claimed that he forced her to commit a sex act on him sometime around 1984. But she provided foggy details to FBI agents, including that the alleged encounter with Trump happened when she traveled north to New York or New Jersey with Epstein, who was a fixture in elite society then. Decades before he sought the presidency, Trump had already become a prominent presence in the New York business and social scenes. 

A friend of hers also reported the allegations about Trump to the FBI in 2019. The bureau cited her allegations in an email circulated within the agency and recently made public by the Justice Department. She asked that her friend be protected.

Of the details that The Post and Courier found supported by public records, none related directly to the alleged victim’s claims about Trump.

There is a term for what The Post and Courier did when they went through public records to confirm elements of the reports, "Shoe leather journalism."

I approve. 

In largely unrelated news, it looks like when Ken Starr was not covering up for, "Ever-present football player rapists," he was writing mash letters to Jeffrey Epstein.

Ken Starr spent the '90s and millions of taxpayer dollars investigating a real estate deal that turned up nothing before pivoting to criminalizing an affair between consenting adults. To be clear, Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky raised the sort of serious power imbalance issues that HR departments exist to prevent, but the Starr investigation wasn’t designed to spark a nuanced conversation about sexual harassment, it was an effort to translate quasi-puritanical moral panic into cheap political points.

Apparently, the moral scold of the Clinton era didn’t have the same hang ups when a convicted child sex offender came calling.

Emails included in the DOJs latest Esptein files dump show Starr — while serving as president of Baylor University — personally corresponded with and hosted Jeffrey Epstein on the Baylor campus. In 2012. Four years after Epstein had already pleaded guilty to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution.

………

Lest anyone tries to convince themselves that Starr might not have known about Epstein’s 2008 child prostitution plea — or the much more horrific contemporaneous allegations that were buried by Epstein’s Non-Prosecution Agreement — remember that Ken Starr represented Epstein in that deal. He didn’t just know about the facts of the charge Epstein would plea to, but everything about the case. All the allegations that the career prosecutor on the case kept begging her supervisors, especially future Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, to consider: 

………

Zealously representing a criminal defendant does not require being their buddy. But Starr was calling Epstein his friend and brother years after the fact. While at Baylor, Starr arranged for Epstein to come to Waco and rolled out the red carpet. Starr signed off his emails to Epstein with “hugs” and “love,” because nothing says “appropriate professional boundaries” quite like sending mash notes to a registered sex offender. Starr expressed interest in visiting Epstein in New York and Florida and the two chatted about current events like old college buddies catching up.

In 2016, after Starr was ousted from Baylor over the sexual assault cover-up — oh, right! Remember how Starr’s tenure as Baylor’s president ended after it came out that his office looked the other way amidst a series of sexual assault claims? Claims that the university didn’t address because the football team was nationally relevant? According to the Baylor Lariat, Starr apparently complained to Epstein about a Texas Monthly article detailing the scandal, calling it an “attack” on the “turbo-charged leadership” of football coach Art Briles.

BTW, the Guardian has some reporting about how Epstein was tightly tied to the modeling industry, particularly model scouting, where new (young) girls were approached to model.

You know who else was tightly tied into the modeling industry?  I'll give you a hint.  this other guy owned the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA at one point, and he is now President.

Funny, innit? 

 

Stupid Motherf%$#ker of the Day

Jeffrey Wernick.

He has a proposal to reform government, it starts with, "This article proposes a constitutional upgrade: Decentralize the verification of political power the way Bitcoin decentralized the verification of money."

That's just the lede, and it goes downhill from there.

Headline of the Day

Elon Musk Loves White People. Here’s Why That’s a Problem

—USA Today, in an OP/ED calling out the white supremacist proclivities of the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™

Elon Musk a racist?  Say it ain't so.  Don't you know that there were never were any racists in his native land of South Africa.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a guy whose social media platform most companies still use, is a BIG fan of White people. I mean … you could say he thinks White people are super. Maybe even “supreme.”

It's almost as if he supports some kind of ... White supreme-acy. Or something like that.

Responding to an X user who posted, “The Irish will become a minority in Ireland because Irish men are afraid of being called racist and upsetting people from the 3rd world,” Musk wrote on Feb. 11: “Such men are pathetic traitors.”

How subtle.

Yeah, imagine that.

The guy who told black workers at the Tesla plant to chill out about being called n****r is a racist?

Hoocoodanode? 

Linkage

• What Peter Thiel Saw in Jeffrey Epstein (The Nation) Money quote, "The difference between them wasn’t moral. It was tactical. Epstein may have preferred to talk about pussy, while Thiel stayed up late pondering philosopher Rene Girard’s concept of mimetic desire. But both were both asking the same question: How do we build a world where people like us have unlimited power and the rules don’t apply?"
• Huge Study Finds Living Near Nuclear Plants Linked With Cancer Deaths (Futurism) Not a surprise.My guess is that government operated plants do better.
• Gay Nazis (Or Why Liberal Identity Politics Must Die) (¡Do Not Panic!) When right wing assholes happen to be gay, their political success should not be celebrated.
• Jimi Hendrix's Analog Wizardry Explained (IEEE Spectrum) Kewl stuff.
• Bacteria Engineered to Eat Tumors From the Inside  (Futurism) I'm not expecting this to result in treatments in the foreseeable future, but it is cool.
• FTC Admits Age Verification Violates Children’s Privacy Law, Decides To Just Ignore That (Techdirt) Age verification is a gaping security hole.
• Vitamin K Shot Safety: More Parents Skip Injection That's Not Vaccine (Bloomberg) It's to improve clotting to prevent brain bleeds.  Refusing the injection can kill your kids.
• NYC's Most Sociopathic Motorists Will Pay $60K/Year to Drive Like Assholes  (HellgateNYC) There are no points associated with speed cameras in New York, so this guy is spending over $60K to keep speeding.
• The Battle Against Faux Discounts (Pat Garofalo) Many retailers raise prices then announce their return to normal as a discount.  New York Governor Kathy Hochul is doing the right thing (!) in proposing making this unlawful. 
• Yep, the NYPD Is Still Obsessed With Snowballs (HellgateNYC) Seriously, if you have this much butt hurt over this, get another job! 

I would argue that a proper music video is impossible for this song:

History Rhyming

The fact that private credit defaults in the United States hit 9.2% in 2025, sounds a lot like the leadup to money market funds "Breaking the Buck" in 2008.

The default rate among U.S. corporate borrowers of private credit rose to a record 9.2% in 2025, ​according to a report Friday by credit rating agency ‌Fitch Ratings.

In its monitor of 302 companies with outstanding private credit debt, Fitch recorded 38 defaults among 28 different borrowers. The 9.2% default rate in ​2025 follows a previous record 8.1% rate of defaults ​in 2024.

Smaller issuers with $25 million or less in earnings made ⁠up the majority of last year's defaults, which were diversified ​among sectors, according to the report.

………

Most of ⁠the private credit loans were floating rate and tied to the federal funds rate, which has ​persisted at a high level over the past three ​years. ⁠Fitch pointed to this as a catalyst for last year's defaults.

There are a lot of companies out there who could only service their debts when rates were near 0%.

They are now insolvent, and there is a non-zero chance that this will take down the private credit firms.

This is not good. 

$100/BBL

Is anyone surprised that oil is now over $100.00 a barrel?

It is foreseeable by anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together that bombing Iran and shutting down the Strait of Hormuz would have this effect.

The chairman of oil producer DNO was flying from New York to Oslo early on Feb. 28 when he told staff to turn off the company’s oil wells in Iraq.

America and Israel had just attacked neighboring Iran. Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani wasn’t taking any chances, having weathered a drone strike on the company’s oil fields in Iraqi Kurdistan last summer. By the time he landed, the pumps had stopped—the first oil shutdown of the war.

To the south, another problem was brewing. An apparent recording of an Iranian naval captain telling ships not to enter the Strait of Hormuz spread through industry WhatsApp groups. 

Tanker traffic slowed to a trickle. The doomsday some oil analysts believed could never happen was coming to pass. Unable to ship crude to world markets, much bigger producers in Iraq began to run out of places to put it. The country cut output by more than two-thirds. Tanks in Kuwait were next to fill up. U.S. oil prices vaulted above $100 a barrel Sunday for the first time since the fallout of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

………

On Saturday, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. signaled it too was slowing production so tanks didn’t overflow. If the strait is still closed this Friday, daily output in the region could fall by more than four million barrels, Kaneva estimates. The decline could reach around nine million by the end of March, representing almost a 10th of global demand. 

Also note that Trump has done nothing to replenish the US Strategic Oil Reserve.

I am so glad that my Sharon* and I are driving hybrid vehicles with fuel economy in the 50 mpg range.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

I F%$#ing Hate F%$#ing Daylight F%$#ing Savings F%$#ing Time

That is all.

F%$#. 

Well, Turnabout is Fair Play

US intelligence sources are claiming that Russia is providing high quality satellite imagery to Iran to aid in Tehran efforts to target the US military in the region.

Considering that the US has been generating and supplying the entire kill chain for numerous US weapon systems to the Ukraine to enable them to strike targets deep inside Russia, this seems to me to be an obvious step for Russia to take. 

Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.

The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities.

Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft, said the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

………

Analysts said that the sharing of intelligence would fit the pattern of Iran’s strikes against U.S. forces, including command and control infrastructure, radars, and temporary structures, like the one in Kuwait where six service members were killed.

………

Russia’s assistance reshuffles how various countries have engaged in a proxy war since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Throughout that conflict, U.S. adversaries including Iran, China and North Korea have provided Russia with either direct military aid or material support for Moscow’s vast defense industry. The United States has given Ukraine tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment and shared intelligence on Russian positions to improve Kyiv’s targeting.

This is not going to end well.

We Are Unbelievably Screwed

Remember the claims that in the next few decades anthropogenic climate change will result in increases in sea level?

Well, it's already here, at least according to this study in Nature.

Abstract

The impacts of sea-level rise and other hazards on the coasts of the world are determined by coastal sea-level height and land elevation. Correct integration of both aspects is fundamental for reliable sea-level rise and coastal hazard impact assessments but is often not carefully considered or properly performed. Here we show that more than 99% of the evaluated impact assessments handled sea-level and land elevation data inadequately, thereby misjudging sea level relative to coastal elevation. Based on our literature evaluation, 90% of the hazard assessments assume coastal sea levels based on geoid models, rather than using actual sea-level measurements. Our meta-analyses on global scale show that measured coastal sea level is higher than assumed in most hazard assessments (mean offsets [standard deviation] of 0.27 m [0.76 m] and 0.24 m [0.52 m] for two commonly-used geoids). Regionally, predominantly in the Global South, measured mean sea level can be more than 1 m above global geoids, with the largest differences in the Indo-Pacific. Compared with geoid-based assumptions of coastal sea level, the measured values suggest that with a hypothetical 1 m of relative sea-level rise, 31–37% more land and 48–68% more people (increasing estimates to 77–132 million) would fall below sea level. Our results highlight the need for re-evaluation of existing coastal impact assessments and improvement of research community standards, with possible implications for policymakers, climate finance and coastal adaptation.

It turns out that the climatologists were wrong.  It's worse than they have ever predicted.

It Gets Worse

It turns out that staff at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas were running a betting pool on which detainees would commit suicide.

Yes, I think that we can call them concentration camps now. 

Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.

Owen Ramsingh, a legal permanent resident who spent several weeks at the Camp East Montana detention facility in Texas, told AP that he overheard a security guard talking about a betting pool for which detainee would next die by suicide. The guard said he had paid $500 into the pot, which would all go to the winner with the most accurate predictions on detainees harming themselves.

Without providing details, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told AP that Ramsingh, who was brought to the US at age 5 from the Netherlands, was lying about the suicide bets.

In January, staff at Camp East Montana called 911 to request emergency help for Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old from Cuba. DHS described his death as an attempted suicide. A medical examiner later ruled it a homicide. That same month, staff at the detention facility called 911 to report that a 36-year-old Nicaraguan man died by suicide. The AP reports that “detainees attempted to harm themselves while expressing suicidal ideations on at least six other occasions that resulted in 911 calls.”

Once the site of an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, Camp East Montana is made up of six long tents at the Fort Bliss Army base outside of El Paso. On an average day, the facility holds around 3,000 detainees who are living in harsh conditions: They lack sufficient food and often go without proper medical care, according to AP’s review of 130 calls made to 911. Those calls took place in just about five months—from when the tents were quickly constructed in mid-August to January 20.

The cruelty is the point.

When War Intersects with Eschatology, It is Never Good

The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei is the single greatest strategic blunder in modern US history.

By killing him, the US and Israel didn’t just eliminate a leader; they fulfilled a 1,400-year-old prophecy and created a martyr whose shadow will haunt the West for decades.… pic.twitter.com/AylDxzYjHV

— S͎a͎l͎a͎d͎i͎n͎🇸🇴⚖️🕋✍️ (@InaHassan3) March 3, 2026

Way to create a holy war 

I suggest that you click through to the Ecch (Tweet), but you can also look at this from Juan Cole, where he says much the same thing.

Dr. Cole is one of the preeminent academics on Islam, Shia Islam, and the Arab world.

Basically, the US actions seem almost calculated to check boxes for the Shia vision of end of times. and the return of the 12th Imam 

Short version:

• He was assassinated during Ramadan, just as the first Imam was. 
• He family was killed as well, just as was Husayn at Karbala.
• It feeds into the narrative of the oppressed and the oppressor which is central to Shia Islam.

This gives credibility to a man who was widely loathed and ignored until a few days ago. 

It also turns out that this also plays into more general end of times theology present across all branches of Islam, which is why we are seeing massive protests in predominantly Sunni nations, most notably Pakistan, as well. 

Even if Iran were to capitulate tomorrow, (it won't) in the minds of a significant portion of the world's population, this is the start of a holy war.

 

Headline of the Day

Drinking in Country Music: Are Whiskey Songs Going Away?

— Rolling Stone, discussing how a decrees in drinking has effected the genre.

The subhed says it all, "In Nashville, some are wondering how a decline in drinking may affect artists’ own liquor brands and the songs they sing. “There are more weed songs for sure,” says one songwriter." 

I did not predict this.  My prediction was that AI and self-driving cars would lead to country songs about your pickup truck leaving you. 

Unsurprisingly, Willie Nelson is promoting a THC tonic. 

He's F%$#ing Nuts

So, Trump is demanding unconditional surrender before negotiating with Iran.

This is beginning to sound like that much memed scene from Downfall. 

President Trump declared on Friday that he would settle for nothing short of “unconditional surrender” by Iran, the latest and broadest expansion of his goals for the conflict, and one that could portend a much longer war if he persists in that aim.

Six days into the Israeli and American bombing campaign, Iran has shown no interest, at least publicly, in surrendering. Instead, it has done the opposite, expanding the war to Arab states that host American bases and attacking them with missiles and drones, though in diminishing numbers in recent days.

But Mr. Trump demanded in a social media post that the country capitulate, after which he said would come “the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s),” and promised that the United States and its allies “will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction.”

The president’s bellicose statement reflects how he has melded his longtime vision of a powerful America that makes maximum use of its military might with his new confidence in his ability to decapitate hostile governments, and personally install a new generation of leaders who he believes will bend to American will.

We are f%$#ed. 

It's Friday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's pretty brutal, with non-farm payrolls falling by 92,000 and unemployment rising to 4.4%.

Hiring fizzled in February, a sign of unexpected weakness in the labor market that sent warning signs flashing through the broader economy.

Employers slashed 92,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday, with losses cutting across nearly all major sectors. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4 percent.

The report dimmed the picture of the labor market, injecting a surprising note of caution into an economy already reeling from chaos in energy markets brought on by the war in Iran and fresh unknowns over trade policy. And it all but foreclosed the prospect of a swift resurgence in job growth after an anemic year of hiring that was weighed down by economic uncertainty.

………

Revisions to previous months bolstered the case that the job cuts in February were consistent with a broader decline rather than a blip. In December, employers shed 17,000 jobs, down from an earlier estimate of a gain of 48,000, and hiring figures for January were also revised downward slightly, to 126,000. Taken together, job growth for the last three months effectively slowed to zero.

 In related news the stock market is now officially down for the year. 

A roller-coaster week in the stock market left the S&P 500 in negative territory for the year, after data on Friday showing weakness in the job market added to investors’ consternation stemming from the Iran war.

The S&P 500 fell 1.3 percent on Friday, taking the index’s losses for the week to 2 percent, its worst week of the year so far. The index fell into negative territory for the year on Thursday and now sits 1.5 percent lower than it was at the end of 2025.

Stocks were choppy all week as investors gauged the inflationary impact of the war with Iran, with oil prices rising sharply as crucial energy exports from the Persian Gulf have ground to a halt. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, settled on Friday at over $92 a barrel, up almost 30 percent over the past week. That’s the biggest weekly rise in the oil price since April 2020, when markets globally were roiled by the coronavirus pandemic. In turn, what customers are paying at the pump has risen sharply as well.

The war ain't helping, but I called recession a few months ago, and I am sticking by that.

Primary Update

Outside of Maryland, I generally do not concern my with state house races, but something interested happened in North Carolina, Democrats who voted to override the governor's veto of anti-trans legislation were turfed out.

North Carolina Democrats who’ve crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans since Donald Trump returned to office were handed resounding defeats last night in the state’s early, benchmark primary, the Charlotte Observer reports.

At least four Democrats who supported measures to ban trans student-athletes from play, support ICE, and declare a gender binary in line with the president’s demonization of the LGBTQ+ community went down to defeat, some by extraordinary margins for incumbent lawmakers.

Those margins and a big turnout were leading indicators of Democrats’ enthusiasm this election cycle, the first chance outside of special and off-year elections that voters will have to register a vote on Republicans and Donald Trump’s return to office. 

More of this.

Headline of the Day

Monopoly With A Heaping Side Of Extra Racism 

—Karl Bode, on how the Trump administration is requiring racist policies as a condition of merger approval.

Making America Jim Crow again. 

One of the Trump administration's core policies is to not just approve giant and terrible mergers, but to make racism and sexism a condition companies must meet if they want regulatory approval.

The latest case in point: the Trump FCC rubber stamped yet another major merger in the telecom industry this week. This time the FCC approved the merger of Cox and Charter, two already massive cable companies, creating the biggest cable company in the nation. Just the sort of "populism" everybody asked for!

This kind of consolidation is always harmful to the public interest. U.S. telecom already sees muted competition at the hands of regional monopolies, resulting in high prices, spotty access, and generally terrible customer service.

………

That last bit, "no DEI discrimination," is a requirement by the companies that they eliminate already fairly pathetic company programs simply acknowledging that systemic racism and sexism exist. 

This is just awful.

In Related News, Water is Wet

The headline at Rolling Stone, "Miami Group Chat for Young Conservatives Riddled With Racism," says it all.

I am profoundly unsurprised. 

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Initial Claims


Imports/Exports.Inflation


Wages and Productivity Initial claims are flat, and continuing claims rose slightly.

New hiring? Not so much.

The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits was unchanged last week and layoffs dropped sharply in February, consistent with stable labor market conditions.

While other data from the Labor Department on Thursday showed worker productivity slowed in the fourth quarter, the trend remained strong, helping to curb growth in labor costs ​in 2025. Labor market stability and rising inflation risks from the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran reinforced economists' views that the Federal Reserve was in no rush to resume cutting interest rates.

………

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits were flat at a seasonally adjusted 213,000 for the week ended February 28. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 215,000 claims for the latest week. The unchanged reading was despite unadjusted filings in New York shooting up 17,434 as the state reeled from a massive winter storm.

………

The import duties have since been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump responded to the ruling by imposing a 10% global tariff and later announced it would rise ⁠to 15%.

………

Hiring plans soared 140% from January, but they were down 63% compared to last February. Tepid hiring means some people who lose their jobs are experiencing long bouts of unemployment.

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, increased 46,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.868 million during the week ended February 21, the claims report showed. The data does not include unemployed recent college graduates, whose lack of or limited work history disqualifies them from claiming ​jobless benefits.

We'll have the unemployment rate tomorrow. 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

Never seen a covert CIA separatist military operation so heavily advertised as it's happening, as widely and loudly as they can PR it. You'd almost think CIA was running a deception operation here, to stoke IRI paranoia and get them to massacre local Kurdshttps://t.co/Q00UC4isOM

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) March 4, 2026

To quote Arthur Conan Doyle, "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

There are two possible non-exclusive explanations here that I can think of.

The first is what Mr. Ames suggests, and the second is that this is not an operation to manipulate the Iranians by the US State Security Apparatus, but rather that it is an operation to manipulate Donald Trump by the US State Security Apparatus.

Replaced by Something Even More Bizarrely Inexplicable

So, amid cratering poll numbers, Donald Trump has fired Kristi Noem as head of DHS and replaced her with the stupidest man in the Senate Markwayne Mullin.

There are any number of reasons for this, such as her persistent self dealing and her lying to the Senate about this under oath, or her $¼ billion PR program which primarily consisted of glamor shots of herself, or it could be that she said that Trump had approved her advertising excesses.

Mostly, I think that it's because she got caught, so Trump took her to the gravel pit along with her (alleged) adulterous "Special Advisor" Corey Lewandowski.

Her erstwhile successor mind mindbogglingly stupid, even by the standards of MAGA, which is saying a lot.

"Predictive Markets," My Hairy White Flabby Ass!

Polymarket decided that it would be a keen idea to make book on the possibility of nuclear weapons use in Iran.

Once the news got out, people were horrified, and they backed down.

The crypto-based prediction sensation Polymarket has quietly taken down a bet on whether a nuclear weapon would be detonated before next year.

The bet, which was first listed last November, generated significant controversy on social media Tuesday after it was flagged by several users. 

Polymarket had also highlighted the bet on its official X account that day, tweeting that its market now predicted there was a 22 percent chance a nuclear weapon would be detonated this year. The post has since been deleted — and the bet itself has now been “archived” as of Wednesday morning.

………

The Wall Street Journal reported that the nuclear detonation bet had spiked in popularity after the US and Israel’s deadly strikes in Iran. Before the attacks broke out, only $10,000 in bets had been placed on Friday, according to data from the Block cited by the newspaper. But on Tuesday, the daily trading volume had surged to almost $244,000, bringing the total amount of money on the line to over $830,000.

Anyone want to take a bet on whether senior executives at Polymarket will eventually be frog-marched out of their offices in handcuffs. (My bet is never)

Crockett Conceded and Endorsed Talarico

All those people who were screaming, "Oh my God, Crockett is going to go scorched earth!" were wrong.

What they really were saying was, "This angry n****r scares us." 

She gave a full-throated endorsement of him.  Progressives don't act the way that faux Democrats do.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett congratulated state Rep. James Talarico in a phone call on becoming the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate race in Texas, the congresswoman said in a statement.

"Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person," she said. "This is about the future of all 30 million Texans and getting America back on track."

Crockett called on the party to unite behind Talarico heading into what is expected to be a top race to watch this fall.

"With the primary behind us, Democrats must rally around our nominees and win," she said. "I’m committed to doing my part and will continue working to elect democrats up and down the ballot." 

………

 

No Virginia, AI Cannot Hold Copyright

The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that AI generated material cannot be copyrighted.

I'd rather that they had ruled definitively on this, but is OK.

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case over whether AI-generated art can obtain a copyright, as reported earlier by Reuters. The Monday decision comes after Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist from Missouri, appealed a court’s decision to uphold a ruling that found AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted.

In 2019, the US Copyright Office rejected Thaler’s request to copyright an image, called A Recent Entrance to Paradise, on behalf of an algorithm he created. The Copyright Office reviewed the decision in 2022 and determined that the image doesn’t include “human authorship,” disqualifying it from copyright protection.

After Thaler appealed the decision, US District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled in 2023 that “human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.” That ruling was later upheld in 2025 by a federal appeals court in Washington, DC. As reported by Reuters, Thaler asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling in October 2025, arguing it “created a chilling effect on anyone else considering using AI creatively.”

Ironically enough if I were to paint a copy of his "Artwork" on my belly, hung gummy bears from my nipples, and videotaped myself engaging in interpretative dance, that would be covered by copyright. 

Note to my reader(s):  I promise not to do this.

Why Would Anyone Want to Clone Jim Carrey?

I can understand why someone might want to clone someone, but why on earth would they pick Jim Carrey? 

Why not clone Beethoven, or Albert Camus, or Paul Neil Milne Johnstone instead?

Asking for a friend. 

 

It's Primary Night

Just a quick run-down:

• Texas Senate: James Talerico has defeated Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic Senate primary in Texas, and Cornyn and Paxton are headed for a runoff on the Republican side. (Texas rules require a runoff if a candidate does not secure an absolute majority of the votes.)
• US Congress TX-2: Incumbent Dan Crenshaw, who is definitely nuts, lost the primary to the even nuttier Steve Toth.
• US Congress TX-23: Incumbent Tony Gonzales and Gun Tuber Brandon Herrera are almost tied, and are headed to a runoff.  What makes this race interesting is that married with 6 children Gonzalez had an affair with one of his staffers, harassed her repeatedly, and she committed suicide by setting herself on fire.  Herrera, on the other hand has political positions, particularly with regard to gun laws that are repugnant to me, but he is very entertaining on YouTube.
• US Congress NC-4:  A very close rematch (Yet to be called) between incumbent Valerie Foushee, and Nida Allam.  Of note here is that AIPAC and AI datacenter money was a big factor, and Foushee promised not to take money from them, but received support from a related stealth PACs.  (More on that later)

Here's hoping that further developments give the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) some major heartburn.

Headline of the Day

Judge: IRS broke law ‘approximately 42,695 times’ in giving DHS data

—The Washington Post

That is both a very large and a very precise number. 

Today in Unfortunate Branding

There are a number of things that I tend not to write about because they never happen, you know, things like carnivorous killer sheep, sentient slime molds,honest Republicans, etc.

One of these things is, "Expansions in the Los Angeles Metro."

It's not good or bad, it's just never gonna happen.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that they have extended some lines, including, so it seems, the "D" line, which will be adding 3 lines later this Spring.

The folks at LA Metro are excited about this.  They are so excited that they are selling a T-shirt to commemorate this.

What does this shirt say?  

It says, "Ride the D."

The shirts have sold out.

L.A. Metro really wants people to take their soon-to-be-opened rail line extension, and have come up with a wildly popular marketing method to spread the word — a new line of merchandise proudly emblazoned with the phrase, “Ride the D.”

The cheeky shirts, available both in full length and as crop tops, have become a viral sensation, with the initial release selling out in just one day. But those eager to own their own need not despair: The transit system announced shortly before 3 p.m. Friday that a limited batch was back in stock.

“If you neeeeeeeeD it GO NOW,” L.A. Metro wrote in an Instagram post announcing the restock. The T-shirt is on sale for $21 and the crop top for $20. Fans were encouraged to snap them up quickly before they sell out again.


The shirts’ release Thursday coincided with the announcement that the first phase of the Metro D Line subway extension will open May 8, with three new stations connecting downtown Los Angeles to Beverly Hills. The new stations are located at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, Wilshire/La Cienega and will collectively serve Koreatown, Miracle Mile, Hancock Park, Carthay Circle, the Fairfax District and Beverly Hills.

YouTube Comment of the Day

They [The Beatles] weren't "going" prog, they were inventing it.

User @jamescox42317 d explaining to producer and composer Isaac Brown what the Beatles really did.

Brown has a series of videos of him reacting to hearing every Beatles album for the first time. (Thank you for making me feel old as f%$#, dude!)

While listening to, "Happiness is a Warm Gun," Brown says, "What the heck is this, Prog Rock? Hey, The Beatles are going Prog!" (about 27:10 of Part 1 below) 

Over the span of less than a decade, the Fab Four literally redefined rock and roll.

Part 1:

Part2:

FWIW, I do agree with Brown's basic thesis, which is that White Album is less an album than it is a collection of songs from 4 amazingly talented dudes.

It is a chaotic magnificent masterpiece, and my favorite Beatles album. 

Gee Ya Think?

Someone at the New York Times has noticed that while people were enchanted by the possibilities of the dot-com developments around the turn of the century, they hate the current AI bubble with a white hot burning passion.

Maybe it's because there is no promise of making the world a better place, but rather a transparent attempt to loot society from narcissistic psychopaths.

Silicon Valley executives promise that artificial intelligence is going to radically change everyone’s life for the better, starting just a few minutes from now. A.I. is described as the new electricity. It’s even bigger than fire. Don’t bother saving money for retirement because everyone will be rich rich rich.

Your grandparents heard pretty much the same thing. The creators of a new technology have always sold it as producing a fundamental transformation of human existence. The radio was touted as bringing “perpetual peace on earth.” Television was supposed to arouse so much empathy for different cultures that it would end war. Cable television would educate the masses and lead to widespread enlightenment.

This time, though, the masses have not been won over.

In a YouGov survey last year, more than a third of respondents said they were concerned that A.I. would end human life on earth. Even those with a more hopeful attitude overwhelmingly said in another poll that they would not pay extra to put A.I. on their devices. And in the most recent large survey conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 80 percent of firms reported that A.I. was having no impact on their productivity or employment.

They Silly-Con valley types are promising that you lose your job, that you will work harder, that your electric bill will go up, but it's all good, because they will get rich.

People remember the dot-com bust around 2000, and they remember how criminals in high finance were bailed out rather than arrested, and they see this all happening again.

Americans get it because they have seen it before, and used that information to develop understanding, something which current AI will never be able to do.

Margaret Atwood Must Be Weeping

In a move that highlights the inhumanity of the Trump administration, immigration authorities are moving detained girls to Texas to force them to have their babies.

This includes many rape victims. 

These people need to be permanently removed from anything resembling a position of power.

All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.

As detainees are frequently moved across state lines quickly, often to red states like Texas, pregnant people are facing challenges accessing reproductive health care in detention centers.

Unaccompanied minors who lack immigration documentation are at high risk for trafficking and other forms of harm, so they fall under the care of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), which previously had facilities across the country capable of caring for children under the age of 18 who are pregnant.

Since July, more than a dozen pregnant children have been moved to a single facility in the small town of San Benito, along the south Texas border. The children kept in Texas are as young as 13, and about half are pregnant because of rape, according to a joint investigation by the Texas Newsroom and the California Newsroom. In Texas, abortion is banned in nearly all circumstances, including rape and incest.

 When the worm turns, the need to be taken down.  To quote Robert Graves apocryphal quote of They cannot be reasoned with.  To quote Robert Graves apocryphal quote of Germanicus Caesar, "They must be struck into the dust, struck down again as they rise. Struck again while they lie groaning, while their wounds still pain them." 

 

Today in TACO

Trump has decided to retreat in response to lawsuits from law firms he was trying to shake down.

Yeah, this sort of bullsh%$ is something that is beyond even the hackery of his most corrupt pet judges, except, perhaps,  Aileen Cannon. 

The Trump administration on Monday abandoned its defense of the president’s executive orders sanctioning several law firms, punctuating a year of turmoil that rocked the legal industry and forced its leaders to choose between taking on the White House or capitulating.

In a court filing, the Justice Department said it was dropping its appeals of four trial-court rulings that struck down Trump’s actions against law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey. The move came just days before the Justice Department’s opening brief was due in an appeal of the four cases, which were consolidated before a federal court in Washington.

………

The firm added that it viewed the case as a fight not just for itself but “for the people across this country who refuse to back down in the face of an administration that seeks to silence and intimidate them—lawyers and nonlawyers alike.”

Trump issued a string of executive orders last year against several law firms and individual lawyers that would have stripped security clearances, restricted their access to federal buildings and directed agencies to end any federal contracts with the firms and their clients.

………

In targeting the firms, Trump cited their connections to his political rivals and criticized their diversity initiatives and pro bono work advocating for immigrants, transgender rights and voting protections. The White House had singled out these firms for representing clients including Hillary Clinton and George Soros, and for ties to figures such as Robert Mueller, who as special counsel led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election 

It does appear that the law firms that prostrated themselves to Trump have found it hard to recruit and keep staff. 

Let the market decide, I guess. 

Linkage

• US – Europe Productivity Gap Is Mostly a Statistical Illusion (CEPR) Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
• The DJI Romo robovac had security so poor, this man remotely accessed thousands of them (The Verge) The internet of sh%$.
• Hackers Expose The Massive Surveillance Stack Hiding Inside Your “Age Verification” Check (Techdirt) Hoocoocanode that, "Could I have your date of birth, mother's maiden name, and last 4 of your social security number," could be insecure?
• Crypto Bros Nauseated After Realizing Bitcoin Itself Was Funded by Jeffrey Epstein (Futurism) Much Schadenfreude
• Bill Gates Admits to Multiple Affairs in Epstein Fallout (Futurism) We already knew this.  It's not that Gates or the other Epstein fellow travelers were pedophiles, they were just people who wanted to demonstrate their wealth and power through transgressing.
• Is "MAHA" Revenge for Theranos? (Pandemic Accountability Index) Yeah, Elizabeth Holmes is a martyr to the antivaxx crowd.
• China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it's turned this 'biological void' into a carbon sink (Live Science) But in the US, we have the lead in obscure financial instruments.
• Tesla’s Wile E. Coyote Moment Is Here (American Prospect) How can I not share a Warner Brothers animation reference?
• Kentucky man covered in fur arrested after allegedly being caught having sex with deer (Local 12 News) I have never partied that hard.
• ‘A beaver blind date’: animals given freedom to repopulate Cornish rivers (The Guardian) It's about the reintroduction of the dam building rodents into the UK.  Whoever wrote the hed just has a dirty mind.

This is tin-foil hat stuff, but at least it's not AI:

Today in Fascism

Florida Republicans wants to establish a state level intelligence agency.

Let me be clear, I am not talking about a law enforcement agency, I am talking about a domestic spy agency. 

“Florida man seeks to create a state counterintelligence unit and claim sweeping surveillance powers over people whose ‘views’ or ‘opinions’ he dislikes.” It’s not nearly as amusing as the usual “Florida man” headline, and it may lead to a blueprint for lawmakers far beyond Florida.

If Florida enacts House Bill 945, it will create a national first – CIA-style structure at the state level that blurs the traditional line between state law enforcement and intelligence work. It likely wouldn’t remain a local experiment. Red states often borrow aggressively from one another’s policy playbooks, on everything from gerrymandering to anti-abortion laws to transporting immigrants to Democratic-led states. A state-level intelligence office empowered to scrutinize residents based on ideology is precisely the kind of proposal likely to spread once normalized.

The bill would create an operational intelligence office charged with identifying and disrupting threats to Florida and the United States. That alone should raise questions. The federal government already spends enormous sums (by some accounts, trillions of dollars since 11 September 2001) on national security and counterterrorism. Why should states duplicate those functions without demonstrating a clear need, specialized expertise, or meaningful oversight?

………

The bill’s language allows scrutiny based on “views” and “opinions”, a standard that echoes some of the darkest chapters of American surveillance history. In the 1960s and 70s, the FBI’s Cointelpro program infiltrated protest movements, monitored journalists, and targeted civil rights leaders – not for crimes, but beliefs.

I have no doubt that this would be used as a rat-f%$#ing squad.  It's purpose would be to disrupt the activities of the political opposition. 

So, About This Iran Thing

The technical term for this is, "Bad day at the office."

Where to start ……… Where to start.

I'll guess I'll start at the most ghoulish thing so far, the online betting site Polymarket is vociferously defending its making book on the war, despite the fact that we have already seen insider trading:

Polymarket has been allowing people to bet on when the US would strike Iran next. Obviously, now that it’s actually happened and people have died, the prediction betting market is feeling some pressure. The site has been at the center of controversy before, including suspicions of insider trading on the Super Bowl halftime show and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

In a statement posted on its site, Polymarket defended its decision to allow betting on the potential start of a war, saying that it was an “invaluable” source of news and answers, before taking shots at traditional media and Elon Musk’s X. The statement reads:

Ah yes, the betting equivalent of snuff films.  Lovely.

On a more significant note, it has been confirmed that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been assassinated by a joint Israeli US operation.  Given his position within Shia Islam, where he was considered one of the most, if not the most, important sources of religious scholarship and authority, it is highly likely that this will inflame sentiment throughout areas with significant Shia populations.

There are two problems with Assassinations, they do not work even when the target is successfully killed, and they legitimize assassination as a tool of statecraft, and western leaders are far more exposed. 

I would also note that among the strikes, somehow or other the US and Israel managed to bomb a girl's elementary school, killing over 50. 

God bless America, huh?

Meanwhile the Strait of Hormuz is shut down, not because of Iranian mines or attacks, but because insurance has been canceled for ships wishing to transit the waterway.

Leading maritime insurers have cancelled war risk cover for vessels operating in the Gulf as the escalating Iran conflict disrupted shipping and sent some freight costs surging.

At least 150 vessels including oil and liquefied natural gas tankers have dropped anchor in the strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters, and at least three tankers were damaged and one seafarer killed over the weekend.

The vital shipping route, through which about 20% of the world’s oil supplies and 20% of seaborne gas tankers pass, is effectively closed after the US and Israel began intense airstrikes on Iran on Saturday.

Several leading mutual marine insurers, including Norway’s Gard and Skuld, the UK’s NorthStandard and the London P&I Club, and the New York-based American Club, said they were cancelling war risk cover for ships operating in the region.

Western shipping companies don't wipe their ass without insurance coverage.

And, of course.there have been deaths of American personnel immediately followed by a typically callous statement by Trump.

President Donald Trump’s indifference towards U.S. soldiers killed in a war he started is not sitting well with some Americans.

Trump, 79, addressed the nation on Sunday and said that “there will likely be more” U.S. military personnel killed in the war with Iran that he started on Saturday, saying “that’s the way it is.”

(emphasis mine)

Finally, we have 3 F-15 Eagle fighters shot down, allegedly by friendly fire from Kuwaiti air defense units.

My guess would be that the volume of Iranian counter-attacks around the Persian Gulf overwhelmed these units, resulting in the shoot-down, though there are a number of other possibilities (sabotage of IFF systems, a strike from Iranian long range SAMs, etc.)

There are already rumblings that the US will declare victory and pull out.

I Take ONE Day Off...

And the United States and Israel are at war with Iran, and allegedly the Ali Khamenei has been assassinated by US air strike.

Trump is claiming that the purpose is regime change. 

As near as I can tell, there have been no plans for a large boots on the ground campaign, and the record of air power triggering regime change is extremely thin, so if I were a betting man, I would bet on this conflict ending up a loss for the United States.

I Saw This in 2008

It looks like investors are setting up complex financial instruments to protect themselves from the collapse of AI companies. (Archive.is link)

This sounds like the (ultimately ineffective) attempts in the 2006-2008 time frame to use similar instruments. 

Investors are riding out the “whack-a-mole” software sell-off by loading up on protection against volatility and exploiting the divergence in sectors tipped to be either winners or losers from AI’s advance.

Some of Wall Street’s biggest players are turning to complex options and hedging strategies to navigate a market buffeted by blog posts and headlines that have recently wiped tens of billions of dollars off the value of some of the S&P 500’s largest tech groups.

Yes, adding complexity to an unstable market always work out SO well.

………

Investors are embracing so-called dispersion trades, which involve buying single-stock volatility while selling index volatility to profit from the gap between the S&P 500’s relatively subdued daily moves and large price swings for individual companies.

………

Dispersion trades could come unstuck if markets suffer a broader setback — perhaps sparked by geopolitical risks or an escalation of trade wars — that causes stocks to fall in unison. 

In that situation, investors who have bet on dispersion might be forced to buy index-level volatility protection, potentially exacerbating a market-wide sell-off, according to Jasmine Yeo, a fund manager at Ruffer.

Gee, isn't that how CDOs and the like led to the panic in 2008?

We are f%$#ed/