L.
For the archives.
See the blog's disclaimer.
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The Book Page
Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI, Anil Ananthaswamy, c. 2024 / 2025.
Notes are kept here. Meager as they may be.
Holy mackerel! This chapter:
George Cybenko was surprised by the reception he got.
Locator: 50491USPS.
USPS has quit forwarding cash to the company's pension system -- the pension that pays its retirees -- to save money in order to keep operations going.
One immediate problem: all that cash that should have been going into the pension system will not be invested -- not even in 2% bonds/Treasuries/whatever -- and will instead be used to pay ongoing operational costs. In other words, the pension system that is projected to "be depleted by 2031" will run out of cash even sooner. Looking at the numbers, the USPS seems to be in worse trouble than PEMX. Even a third-year college football player can understand that problem. Not so sure about a third-year college basketball player, but I digress.
The TSP is not affected and, in fact, is doing very, very well. See below.
This is going to be the next headline story after the TSP problem is solved.
Current employees continue to pay into their pension fund. That money is generally "bundled" and then sent to the administrator in Washington who oversees the pension fund that pays retirees. There is enough money in the pension plan for now. Assuming contributions are not used for current operations.
But the writing is on the wall. There are plenty of options:
My hunch: Congress will fully fund USPS and they will get that done before they solve DHS/TSA problems.
By the way, TSP:
Locator: 50490APPLE.
Tag: AAPL.
Today: link here.
Apple simply can't keep up with demand.
Yesterday:
And the day before:
Apple has a huge problem. Apple can't keep up with MacBook Neo demand. And they've run out of chips for the current Neo. They are using chips newer, high-end models that have been upgraded with new chips. Ordinarily, the older chips for these newer, high-end models would simply be trashed.
Apple is now using these high-end chips, that would otherwise be trashed for the MacBook Neo.
The most expensive part of a laptop? The CPU?
And Apple is putting in high-end CPUs into the MaBook Neo and these chips are costing Apple nothing.
The problem: Apple will soon run out of these high-end CPUs to meet MacBook Neo demand.
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Micron
Locator: 50489TSMC.
Disclaimer: there may be typographical and content errors on this page. I often misread things. Read the blog's disclaimer.
And "they" said it was a bubble and "they" said the Phoenix endeavor would be a debacle.
TSMC: best quarter ever -- revenue up 35%. Compared to TSMC, what was AAPL's best quarter:
That $144 billion in revenue in one quarter for Apple -- what was TSMC's revenue in their best quarter ever? $36 billion or one-fourth of Apple's record revenue in one quarter.
I first "met" Peter Zeihan back in 2022, or thereabouts, when he published The End Of The World Is Just The Beginning, published June 14, 2022. The big -- almost my only -- takeaway from that book:
My notes, very, very sparse, on that book, are here.
Time to take a look at the current CNO and the former CNO:
US Secretary of the Navy:
Of the last ten US secretaries of the navy, how many have had no military experience? Even experience in the defense industry? One. Exactly one has had no military experience. John C. Phelan.
Of the recent U.S. Navy Secretaries, only one of the last ten (John Phelan, confirmed in 2025) has had no prior military experience. While some nominees in recent years faced scrutiny over limited background in national security, most secretaries in the last 15–20 years served in the armed forces or held high-level defense industry/government roles.
And folks are concerned about Hegseth? LOL.
By the way, the importance of water for trade. For the US -- the Mississippi drainage system led the list on what made America great. The opening of the Panama Canal, which Jimmy Carter gave (away for free) to Panama, was also on that same list, near the top.
Wow, here's a digression: Carter --> Obama --> Biden --> almost Kamala. Scary, huh?
From Peter Zeihan today:
A cornerstone of modern globalization, the World Trade Organization (WTO), is collapsing. Following the Cold War, the post-WWII system needed a legal system to enforce trade rules, so the WTO was born.
But the WTO was slow, and its court-based dispute system couldn't enforce meaningful penalties. And its requirement for unanimous agreement made new trade deals nearly impossible. So, trade liberalization has stalled for decades.
Without the WTO, the world will revert to regional trading blocs. The issue is that this leaves several regions without balanced economies (you need production and consumption, and only a handful of areas have that).
As the WTO falls apart, expect decades of economic instability and conflict.
The WTO: wiki.
Locator: 50487B.
NetJets: there were a lot of golfers wearing "NetJets" insignia yesterday at the Masters.
NetJets is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate led by Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway acquired the company in 1998, and it has since become a cornerstone of their portfolio, offering premier fractional aircraft ownership and private aviation services.
NetJets passengers avoid standard TSA lines by using private Fixed-Base Operators (FBOs) instead of main airport terminals. They bypass crowded security checkpoints and proceed directly to their aircraft, undergoing only minimal identification verification or baggage checks by private security personnel or pilots.
Memo to self, today:
Another headline: Yet another story pointing out how the world is preparing to move away from reliance on Mideast oil. Saudi's worst nightmare.
No tears for Saudi. These were the same guys that tried to destroy fracking years ago. What goes around, comes around.
Natural gas: fracking and the US -- all of a sudden, fracking isn't so bad. EU says the rules stay in place -- they simply aren't enforcing them.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $98.88. Next week, back over $100?
New wells reporting:
RBN Energy: with production on the rise, several pipelines in the works to move Canadian crude to the US. Link here. Yet another story pointing out how the world is preparing to move away from reliance on Mideast oil. Saudi's worst nightmare. Archived. The first company mentioned: Enbridge?
As crude oil production continues to grow in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB), more pipeline capacity will be needed to move it to market. The startup of the 590-Mb/d Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) in May 2024 temporarily created a period of surplus takeaway capacity, but that is shrinking and more will soon be needed, as WCSB crude production typically grows by 100 to 200 Mb/d annually, and there is no shortage of resource to develop. Thankfully, some new capacity is on its way in 2026 and 2027, and much more is being planned. In today’s RBN blog, we go through all the projects in the works.
In Part 1 of this series, we discussed the drivers behind WCSB crude oil production nearly doubling from 2010 to 2025, as well as its seasonal trends. In Part 2, we reviewed the major pipeline projects that expanded capacity to move barrels out of the WCSB up to this point, how the timing of those projects matched up with supply growth, and current export pipeline capacity. In Part 3, we examined how WCSB crude oil price discounts are impacted by pipeline scarcity and production seasonality. And in Part 4, we looked at where WCSB crude oil goes, how it gets there, and how its end markets have evolved over time.
Once again, we’ll start this blog off by orienting ourselves with a map that shows the key existing pipelines that move crude oil out of the WCSB, which include:
- Enbridge’s 3.22-MMb/d Mainline system (light-pink lines in Figure 1)
- The Canadian government’s 890-Mb/d Trans Mountain Pipeline System (TMPS; purple line at top left)
- South Bow’s 610-Mb/d Keystone Pipeline System (medium-blue line in middle)
- Enbridge’s Express-Platte Pipeline System (dark-pink line; 310 Mb/d of export capacity)
- Inter Pipeline’s ~98-Mb/d Bow River/Milk River pipeline system (light-green lines near top left)
- Plains’ ~20 Mb/d Rangeland/Aurora pipeline system (dark-green lines near top left)
Figure 1. Major Pipeline Systems Moving WCSB Crude Oil. Source: RBN