Sunday, July 12, 2026

Sunday Night -- July 12, 2026

Locator: 51151ARCHIVES.

Updates

Later, 12:15 a.m., July 13, 2026: I'm still re-reading Atom by Lawrence M. Krauss, c. 2001 -- all I can say is that AI is going to change the way education is taught in ways we haven't even begun to imagine yet. 

Obviously at the post-graduate level, AI is incredibly important. To what extent AI is being used / accepted at the undergraduate level, I have no idea. But I'm quite sure that AI is not being effectively used at the high school, middle school, or elementary school yet. My notes for Atom are here.

Later, 9:07 p.m. CT: lots of reports coming from various sources that US and Iran are back to trading missiles in the last several hours, or something to that effect. 

Original Post 

Top eleven states in which to liveCNBC's annual ranking. 

These are the 2026 results. As soon as you see the list, well, IYKYK. Link here
North Dakota made the top eleven list, coming in at #9. Beating out California, Texas, Florida -- none of which made the top 11. North Dakota beat out Massachusetts, #10 -- assuming I'm reading the list correctly. Hawaii was #6. Both North Dakota and Hawaii had identical grade ratings B+. 
Minnesota was #4. Vermont was #1 -- top of the list for Bernie Sanders. New Jersey was #3. It's hard to get much bluer than those three states.

Ten worst states, link here. Tennessee is the worse state (#50) and Texas is #49. IYKYK. It seems most of the states had one thing in common -- think UT(#45). Indiana was most surprising (#48).

US exports of crude oil, link here. Trending toward 6 million bbls of oil per day; compare to 30,000 bbls of crude oil / day in 2010B.

  • Almost a 40%increase month-over-month. Something tells me Chris Wright, US Secretary of Energy and Doug Burgum, US Secretary of the Interior, have mixed feelings. But not very mixed.

US petroleum exports:

Lincoln's corollary to the Declaration of Independence, link here. A rambling thought. The article at the link was published just shortly after former president noted that the founding fathers (which do not include Abraham Lincoln) were not perfect when discussing race. Somehow he forgot to mention it was a Republican that took on that issue, and how the southern Democrats dealt with the issue. 

Investing: three stocks for the long-haul. Amazon, Marvell, and AMD. Link here.

Investing: futures for both the NASDAQ and the Dow Jones were down about 100 points at 8:33 p.m. Sunday night. See CNBC. Later, 9:43 p.m. the NASDAQ futures were down 250 points and the Dow Jones was down 175 points. It's early in the 3rd quarter.

USPS: Forever Stamps now cost 82 cents / first ounce, first class mail. Previously posted. 

WTI: tonight -- 8:53 p.m. ET -- $74.22. Later, at 9:00 p.m., WTI had risen 4.08%, up $2.91, trading at $74.32Later, 9:40, WTI at $74.51.  

The previous price reported for WTI was close-of-day, Friday, July 10, 2026: $71.41.