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On The Wrong Side Of History?
It's Beginning To Look That Way
The S&P 500 hit another record high today.
This is starting to not look good.
BRK-B's benchmark: the S&P 500.
BRK-B: down 12.5% from its 52-week high.
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Passing The Baton -- A Flashback
Locator: 48645REALITY.
Yuval Noah Harari was recently in the news again. Link here.
Yuval needs to look at 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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What The Hell Happened To Centene?
Down 40% in the past five days.
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Wow, Wow, Wow -- Another Very Misleading Headline
Based on the headline, I thought Freevee was gone for good. But it’s not going away. And it will still be free. There will simply be one less "icon" selection on my streaming monitor.
Nope, it's not gone. Freevee has simply migrated to Amazon Prime Video.
From the linked article:
Amazon is discontinuing its stand-alone free streaming TV service next month as it looks to consolidate its content offerings under Prime Video.
The service, called Freevee, launched in 2019 underneath IMDb, the film and TV site Amazon bought in 1998. It offered a stable of free, ad-supported video, including original series and some Prime Video content, primarily through an app.
The Freevee app will shut down in August, at which point users will be able to watch shows and movies on Prime Video for free without a subscription to Amazon’s Prime loyalty program, according to a notice to users. “Prime Video is the new exclusive home for Freevee TV shows, movies and Live TV,” the notice states.
Middle East: Trump and Netanyahu are re-drawing the maps and allegiances across the Mideast. Link here.
Trump's new moniker: "Lawrence of Arabia" obviously doesn't work, so in the Levant and Persia, POTUS will simply accept "The Don Of the New Mideast." Or "the dawn of the new Mideast." We'll wait for Judge Boasberg to weigh in.
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Trump Accounts For Newborns
Original post: Trump Accounts For Infants And Children: The "$1,000 Trump Accounts" program proposed by President Donald Trump would be tax-deferred investment accounts for newborns, intended to give children a financial head start.
In fact, these accounts are god-awful. Absolutely worthless. They are way too limited, too many strings attached, only allow eight years total investment (birth to age eight), and when tapped, taxed at regular income rates. "529s" are so much better.
We may discuss this again later, once the bill passes, assuming it does (pass).
Updated: July 21, 2025.
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HVD
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $67.29.
Active rigs: 30.
Nine new permits, #42077 - #42085, inclusive:
Five permits renewed:
Six permit cancellations:
Locator: 48643ARCHIVES.
Updates
July 5, 2025: The WSJ today. Whoo-hoo! They're reading the blog! My passport arrived today; photos pending. Couldn't be happier.
Original Post
I applied to renew my expired passport online less than ten days ago. Took me about twenty minutes to complete the online application.
Same day response from the US State Department that they had received my application and would begin processing my application once the credit card payment cleared.
Two days later, I received a note from the US State Dept letting me know that the payment had cleared and they had began processing my application.
Today, I received an e-mail saying the passport and the passport card had been completed and both have been mailed, and mailed separately. I think the whole process took less than ten days and three - five days of that will be due to mailing the documents. Truly amazing.
My passport expired in 2023 and I thought I would have to do a whole lot more to get a new passport, but if a passport is expired less than five years, it can be simply renewed on line.
Amazing.
By the way, I let my passport expire because I thought I would never need it again; I'm done traveling overseas. But it turns out, everything I do, it seems, "someone" asks me for my passport -- including when I went to renew my Texas "Real ID" driver's license. Say what you want, this country does pretty well in the big scheme of things.
Advice: the most important thing -- get your passport photo taken by someone who knows what they are doing. I had no problem with my passport photo but I can say without qualification the photo was the most challenging part of the process.
Submitted June 24, 2025, on-line:
June 24, 2025 -- July 9, 2025: 16 days -- less than three weeks.
Locator: 48642ARCHIVES.
This has nothing to do with the Bakken or the market. This is simply some rambling.
The best thing I ever did was start a blog.
Now, I see that Apple has added a new app: journaling. Interesting.
Journaling.
I looked at the app the other day.
I'm thrilled that Apple is encouraging folks to journal. I think it's the most important thing folks can do. I prefer that folks journal the old-fashioned way -- pen and journal but, I assume, an e-journal is the way-to-go for the new generation.
At night, when I can't sleep, and I don't want to read the news, I find myself reading my own e-journals, or rather, my various blogs.
My favorite blog is my "literature" blog.
I think, in the big scheme of things, the best website I ever did for me personally was the blog on literature.
It's amazing how much original material I have. I will use it as a jumping off point when studying literature (and history) with Sophia.
ChatGPT (or the AI of your choice) has become a huge, excellent complement to the blogging process.
I have learned the importance of scaffolding when studying an issue. We'll talk about scaffolding later. I've already discussed the concept with ChatGPT. It is absolutely amazing how quickly ChatGPT becomes your best friend. Absolutely scary. LOL.
By the way, I forwarded the list below to ChatGPT and asked ChatGPT, based on the book list below, what she recommends I read next. She gave me four suggestions. Truly amazing. And she read and analyzed my list in a nanosecond.
My hunch: a college student could submit an essay to ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT to grade and critique it before submitting it for a grade. LOL.
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Summer Reading Program
Summer reading program: 2025