I Have No Idea What This Is All About -- But Somehow I Think I May Enjoy It -- August 2, 2025

Locator: 48763CULTURE.  

From PowerLine:

But on the internet, these stories [Ukraine war; Trump's tariffs; Russian collusion] paled in comparison with American Eagle’s ad campaign promoting the company’s jeans. American Eagle had the temerity to launch a campaign that features the actress Sydney Sweeney, a buxom blonde who seems suspiciously un-woke.

No one complained when Beyonce was featured in a jeans ad campaign, but a white girl? Nazi propaganda! One of the stupidest faux controversies on record spawned a record number of memes.

Once The Initial Phase Comes On Line, The Proposed Cheyenne, Wyoming, Data Center Would Use 5x The State's Entire Current Power Demand -- But That's Just A Start -- August 2, 2025

Locator: 48762LDC.

Link here. 

On Monday, July 28, 2025, Mayor Patrick Collins of Cheyenne, Wyoming, announced plans for an AI data center that would consume more electricity than all homes in the state combined. 

The facility, a joint venture between energy infrastructure company Tallgrass and AI data center developer Crusoe, would start at 1.8 gigawatts and scale up to 10 gigawatts of power use. 

The project's energy demands are difficult to overstate for Wyoming, the least populous US state. 

The initial 1.8-gigawatt phase, consuming 15.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) annually, is more than five times the electricity used by every household in the state combined. That figure represents 91 percent of the 17.3 TWh currently consumed by all of Wyoming's residential, commercial, and industrial sectors combined. 

At its full 10-gigawatt capacity, the proposed data center would consume 87.6 Two of electricity annually—double the 43.2 TWh the entire state currently generates.

Investing -- August 2, 2025

Locator: 48761INVESTING.

Updates

Original Post
2:01 p.m. CT -- Saturday, August 2, 2025

GM doesn't care about the trade deficit, or the GDP, or making America great, or the national debt. All GM cares about is making money for the company. Don't take that out of context, and feel free to replace GM with any other company. 

"Yesterday" -- the US policy was "globalization," DEI, and being woke.

Things have changed.

"Today" -- the US policy is make America great again. Most see that as simply reindustrialization of America. 

Timing is everything. 

Separate from reindustrialization is the fourth (or sixth, as I count) industrial revolution.

This does not happen overnight

The transistor was successfully demonstrated on December 23, 1947. Link here.

The transistor radio was released in 1954 and experienced explosive growth after 1957. Link here.

Transistor to the transistor radio, la-de-dah -- ten years and that's all we got -- a little hand-held radio.

Mainframe computers came into their own, but slowly accepted, in the 1960s.  Link here. It was a big deal when our college put an IBM computer into the basement of the science building in 1968. Another ten years from the transistor radio.

Apple's first personal computer was the Apple I, released in 1976. Essentially another ten years. From 1968 to 1976, another ten years.

Is there a trend here? 

Sort of like equivalent to Moore's Law.

BlackBerry pager, a precursor to the BlackBerry Storm, was introduced in 1999. From the first Apple personal computer to a simple pager: 1976 - 1999 -- more than 20 years.

So, from the transistor, 1947 to 1997, fifty years.

The first Apple iPhone was introduced June 29, 2007. I remember that presentation. I was watching it live.

1947 --> 1997 --> 2007 -- another ten years. And now, sixty years from the invention of the transistor.

Rounding, Sophia is ten years old. 

In sixty years Sophia will be 70 years old.

My investment horizon is a rolling horizon: every day I wake up my investment horizon is 30 years plus a day. 

I think I will quit here for now. Folks can connect the dots:

• reindustrializing
• sixth industrial revolution
• time
• energy demand will increase over time
• communication technology will never go out of favor
• the importance of not making a misstep (exhibit A: Intel)
• the importance of individualism (exhibit A: Jensen Huang, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison)
• GM
• capitalism will win out over globalization, DEI, and wokeness
• capitalism will also win out of socialism every time 
• the era of the transistor began 80 years ago
• things take time
• quantum computing is around the corner
  
• GM doesn't care about the trade deficit, or the GDP, or making America great, or the national debt.  GM simply wants to make money.

Earnings: ENB And BRK -- August 2, 2025

Locator: 48760FORD.
Locator: 48760ENB.
Locator: 48760AMD.
Locator: 48760JPOW.

ENB: from Charles Kennedy, Enbridge books record core earnings on power and gas demand. Link here. 

Enbridge posted record core earnings, or EBITDA, for the second quarter of the year on the back of strong liquids flows through its pipelines and soaring demand for power generation and feedgas for LNG in North America.

The Canadian pipeline giant on Friday reported record adjusted EBITDA of U$3.36 billion (C$4.6 billion) for the second quarter, up by 7% from a year earlier.

The company expects to finish the year in the upper end of its adjusted EBITDA guidance range, president and CEO Greg Ebel said.

Enbridge’s adjusted earnings rose to US$1.01 billion (C$1.4 billion), or US$0.47 (C$0.65) per common share, up from US$870 million (C$1.2 billion), or US$0.42 (C$0.58), per common share for the same period of 2024.

The C$0.65 earnings per share beat the analyst consensus estimate of C$0.57.

The higher Q2 earnings that also beat Wall Street expectations were the result of strong liquids flows on the Mainline system which Enbridge operates. The pipeline system moves more than 3 million barrels a day of crude oil and liquids from Western Canada to the demand markets in the United States. In total, Enbridge moves 40% of all North American crude.

But surging power and gas demand is also contributing to higher profits.

Enbridge has recently approved the 600-MW Clear Fork solar project in Texas that will support Meta’s data center operations.

In British Columbia in Canada, Enbridge is expanding Aitken Creek—the only underground natural gas storage facility in the province. The expansion will provide enhanced flexibility for Enbridge’s LNG related customers as Canada’s first LNG export project has just started operations. 

BRK: link here to Barron's.  Buried in the article but caught my attention:

Profits rose about 15% at Berkshire’s railroad unit, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, to $1.5 billion, and were higher at the company’s utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Insurance underwriting profits were lower but robust at $2 billion. Investment income rose slightly to $3.4 billion.

AMD: earnings on tap.  

Ford: another recall.

From ChatGPT: Yes — it’s accurate to say Ford was already #1 in recalls among U.S. automakers, and that trend has continued in the first half of 2025. 

Ford’s Recall Standing

Another Ford recall:

• 2024
• in 2024, Ford issued 67 separate recall campaigns, second only to Chrysler (72) in the number of campaigns reported. Ford ranked among the top automakers in recall volume—even in a year Tesla affected more total vehicles impacted—but Ford topped the list in recall count rather than vehicles affected.
• 2025 (to present)
• in the first half of 2025, Ford issued 88–89 recalls, breaking the prevailing record for most recalls in a single calendar year by any U.S. automaker—even before the year is over. That’s more recalls than the next five automakers combined, according to the Wall Street Journal and industry data. 
• for Q1 2025 alone, Ford recalled over 1,057,000 vehicles across 35 campaigns, representing roughly 30% of all U.S. recalls in that quarter. 
• Key Takeaways
• Ford ranked #1 in number of recall campaigns in 2024,
• continues to lead in 2025, where it has already surpassed previous full-year records in just six months. While Tesla often leads by total vehicles impacted, Ford leads in recall frequency and campaign count, which is precisely what forms the basis for saying Ford has the highest recall activity among the major automakers right now,

Data accuracy:

• JPow says his rate decisions are data-base. There are two big things on which folks are not commenting:
• what happens if the data is wrong? 
• Exhibit A: huge revisions in the data in the most recent report; 
• mainstream media provides cover for JPow suggesting that revisions are always an issue this time of year (as they are during the holidays, also); and,
• this suggests that JPow simply takes the data at face value and does not question the data itself;
• at least Trump is questioning the data, right, wrong, or indifferent.

Ukraine: now, opening attacking Russia deep inside Russia's borders, link here --

• using American and European and NATO weapons
• I'm not being hyperbolic here and I'm not a fan of memes, but how is this not WWIII, European theater?

Ledecky Wins "Race Of The Century" -- Breaks World Record -- First Time A Woman Goes Below 8:06 -- Her #1 Adversary Finished Third -- August 2, 2025

Locator: 48759LEDECKY. 

Updates

August 6, 2025: it was all about Ledecky this summer, but The New York Times / The Athletic chose to focus on Summer McIntosh. Link here. 

Summer McIntosh, Canadian, attends the Ontario Virtual School (OVS) as a Grade 11 student. She chose OVS due to the flexibility it offers to accommodate her intense training and competition schedule. She has been with OVS for a few years, initially completing her Grade 11 courses and now working towards her Grade 12 diploma. Ontario, Canada. In most Canadian provinces, high school (also known as secondary school) typically runs from Grade 9 to Grade 12. Grade 11, therefore, is the second to last year of high school, often referred to as the "junior year."

Original Post

Full race here: link to YouTube.

Link here. 

A reader pointed out that the headline above (from the link above) is wrong. In fact, from The New York Times: 

From my perspective, both the headline above (wrong) and the NYTimes suffer because the authors in both cases tried to pack in too much in too little space, in an attempt to dilute the BIG story (Ledecky) by including the #2 and #3 finishers in that event. Sometimes it's better just to say it clearly and succinctly. 

My experiences with ChatGPT is that ChatGPT is much better at providing unambiguous reporting.

YouTube:

• medal ceremony;
• a bit more here;

From the linked article:

Katie Ledecky's historic reign continues after she beat rival Summer McIntosh in one of the biggest non-Olympic swimming races during Saturday's women's 800-meter freestyle at the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore.

The race, dubbed "the biggest race of this century, men or women, from outside of the Olympic format" by NBC swimming analyst Rowdy Gaines this week, lived up to the hype as Ledecky and McIntosh, slotted into lanes 3 and 4, battled to a dramatic finish. The only surprise: Australia's Lani Pallister made it a thrilling three-woman race instead of a duel between only Ledecky and Canada's McIntosh.

McIntosh had the narrow lead with 100 meters left before Ledecky pulled away in the final 50 meters and won in 8:05.62, narrowly beating Pallister (8:05.98). McIntosh was third in 8:07.29 in what was called the greatest 800 freestyle ever. It was the first time two women had ever gone below 8:06.00 in the same 800 free with all three well below 8:08.00.