From Google to Gargle - Cleanse Your Mind Rather than Fill It

Introducing Gargle, not Google. Every other app fills your head. This one empties it. Swish, spit, repeat.

Gargle: the anti-search engine. Zero results - that's the feature. Empty your mind rather than fill it with clutter.

A Level Beyond Conventional Bobbleheads

 His collection began conventionally enough: baseball bobbleheads. Years later, however, it had evolved into the far more obscure field of bobble-bellied sumo wrestlers.

$10 Trillion Market Cap

Bold prediction: it will be the first company to reach $10 trillion in market cap.
In June 2023 it reached $1 trillion. Recently, it reached $5.5 trillion.
It'll reach $10 trillion is less than 3 years - probably a couple.

The American Dr. Who

Doctor Who is delightfully inventive and madcap. The American remake, by contrast, just feels off. Even the title seems pretentious: Doctor Whom.

The Emergence of American Values After 1980

Wonk that I am, I find this fascinating. Jefferson spoke of liberty. Lincoln spoke of union. FDR spoke of jobs and security. Yet presidents rarely spoke of "American values" as an explicit concept until the 1980s. Since then, references have exploded. One possible explanation is that as politics moved from farms and factories to television and media, debates over culture and identity became increasingly central. And maybe, just maybe, you can get more agreement about the importance of American values if you don't specify which values.

Data from the University of California, Santa Barbara's presidential communications database.

Culture Wars - Performers for Obama and Trump This Week

The grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago's South Side featured Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, Christina Aguilera, Common, U2’s Bono and The Edge, Marc Anthony, Eddie Vedder, Tems, and The Roots.

Trump's birthday party included performances by Zac Brown Band, Luke Bryan, Kid Rock, and Cage Fighters.

Which "Pay Iran for Trump's War" Payment Plan Have You Signed Up For?

Apparently Trump is giving Iran $300 billion to settle the war he started. That works out to $1,000 per American. Have you signed up for the one-time payment or are you going for the $100 a month plan for the next year? And are you covering your kids' share or are you just going to pass that along to them as something to roll into their college debt?

Will Car Sales Stall For the Next Couple of Years as Car Capability Hits an Inflection Point?

I'm an old man. I feel convinced that we're in the middle of about a five year period of transition in which cars will change more than they have at any time in my life.

I wonder if this will translate into a period in which new car sales drop off for the next year or two as people wait for self-driving, efficiency, in car entertainment centers, etc. to hit an inflection point.

Trump's Narcoleptocracy

Trump's governance? A narcoleptocracy. He gets to sleep through it but its a waking nightmare for the rest of us.

Pope Leo XIII and Pope Leo XIV - Writing About Industrial and AI Revolutions 135 Years Apart

Pope Leo XIV has done something fascinating. 135 years ago, Pope Leo XIII - the last Pope Leo - wrote a piece about industrial capitalism and the importance of protecting industrial workers. Titled Rerum Novarum ("Of New Things"), it saw the mechanization of labor as the core threat - physical machines replacing human muscle power, reducing workers to mere cogs.

On the anniversary of that piece, Pope Leo XIV wrote a very similar piece about workers and AI.
Leo the XIV's document is Magnifica humanitas ("Magnificent Humanity"), subtitled "On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence." It sees the core threat as the automation of cognition - algorithmic systems replacing human judgment, relationships, and intellect. Leo XIV's first encyclical, was signed on 15 May 2026 — the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum — and published on 25 May. The link reaches back to the first act of his papacy: he chose the name Leo in reference to Leo XIII, and has described AI as ushering in a "new industrial revolution."

Both Pope Leos diagnose the signature danger of their era as the same inversion — the human person slipping from end to instrument while the system or the machine becomes the thing served. The question is which is the tool: the new industrial technology 135 years ago or the new AI technology now vs. the humans interacting with these and at turns using and being used by them.

The first American pope. He's an interesting guy.

Baby Boomer Demand for Sources of Retirement Financing

America is experiencing the largest wave of retirements in history. Roughly 4.1 million Americans per year are reaching retirement age. That's about:

11,300 per day
470 per hour
8 per minute

What is one reason stock prices going up? People are buying equity to finance their retirement.

It is easy to say that this surely would have shown up in purchases BEFORE Americans hit this point of 65 but it is worth remembering that, on average, a 65-year-old American has roughly 20 more years to live, 20 more years to finance; they are not done buying equities once they hit 65.
 

Trump Apparently Wants a Parade After The Cage Match

 Trump started a war and then he ended the war?  Huh.

Converging P/E Ratios for Tesla and Nvidia

Bold Prediction: 
The P/E for Tesla and Nvidia will converge within 3 years. 

Currently P/E for, 

Tesla is 371

Nvidia is 31

First Trillionaire Got There With N/A P/E

Tesla's P/E is 371, more than 10X normal P/E, on profits of $477 million. (For instance, Nvidia's price to earnings ratio is 31.) SpaceX? It doesn't have earnings, posting a massive quarterly net loss of $4.3 billion for Q1 2026.

Combined, the most recent profits of Tesla and SpaceX are negative. Meaning, our world's first trillionaire's two most valuable companies combined have a P/E ratio of ... N/A.

Musk a trillionaire makes as much sense as Trump a president. Maybe that is inevitable in a world in which people get more exposure to memes than reality.

Hugh Laurie's Protest Song

"For evil to flourish, all that is required is for good men to spout cliches."
- Hugh Laurie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8chs2ncYIw

Donald Trump's Birthday Party Cage Match

So many people complaining that Trump is spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for his birthday party tomorrow at the White House, at a time when the country is literally borrowing money just to make interest payments on the debt. I don't know, though. If Donald ends up in a cage match with the right guy, all the money spent could be worth it.

Masculine Themes at Trump's $60 Million Birthday Party

Don John Trump's birthday party this weekend will cost you $60 million. I hope you like cage fighting because that's what he got you. (And if you want to pay more to view it, you can!)

And Sunday we get our second 80 year old president in a row. Add up the ages of our last two presidents, subtract it from 2026 and we get back to 1864, the year Abraham Lincoln was re-elected.

And of course the reason we have such old men in power is because American men aren't secure enough in their own masculinity to vote for women. But they can, of course, pretend that they are so manly as they cheer for the cage fighters.

The Fifth America and Fifth Transitional President .... Coming Soon to a White House Near You

This summer I'll be releasing the book New Politics for the Next Economy. I argue that we've had four Americas with four distinctly different economies and sets of policies. And then prescribe / predict a fifth America. Here is an image of the four past transitional presidents welcoming the fifth and future transitional president.

Apparent Confusion Around Elon Musk's Plans

Global investors have colluded to make Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire, today buying shares of his Space-X company.

It is unclear how much of that came from people under the impression that they were donating to a collection someone was taking up to send Elon to Mars.

Three Facts About the US National Debt

Three facts:
The US now borrows money to pay the INTEREST on the national debt.
The US National debt is now greater than current year GDP.
Republicans who contribute the most to the debt regularly get elected by promising to go after the debt.

More on the size, cost and unsustainability of the federal government debt here:
https://www.gao.gov/blog/federal-governments-debt-growing-faster-than-economy-what-means-for-you

Why AI Is Likely to Surpass Us

AI pioneer, Nobel Prize and Turing Award winner, Geoffrey Hinton makes the point that AI is billions of times better than us humans at sharing information.

My own take of history is that the more people you can share with - goods, markets, ideas, services, information - the more affluent you will be, the more agency you'll have. This simple fact of their superiority in sharing may become the simplest explanation for why they surpass us.

In a decade or two when people ask about why they surpassed us, we will say "They share billions of times better than us."

We will be the first species to be surpassed by another who is able to discuss the fact of our inferiority and possible obsolescence.

[Hinton asks the question, Do you know of any example of a more intelligent being controlled by a less intelligent being (suggesting that as it gains intelligence, AI may not submit to us). And he offers only one example: a mother controlled by a baby.]

Full conversation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7t1Q_p2gZs

The World's First Trillionaire

And we now have the world's first trillionaire. On the day SpaceX went public, Elon Musk passed the trillion dollar mark 12 June 2026.

Possibly related? On 12 June 1987 - 39 years ago - U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!"