“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso
Conflict broke out last night when Hamas attacked Israel. Live updates report possible Israeli soldiers captured, multiple dead and 545 people are being treated in Israeli hospitals.
A lot of people seem to be unaware that the bond market is twice as big as the stock market.
Which is why the recent bond market crash is so scary.
Longer-term bond prices have cratered in recent weeks, turning an already-rough period for the asset class into a rout that rivals some of the worst-ever US financial-market crashes.Ten-year Treasury notes have plummeted 46% since March 2020, according to data from Bloomberg, while 30-year Treasurys are down 53% over the same period.
Stocks last suffered losses of that magnitude 15 years ago, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the 2008 financial crisis led to the benchmark S&P 500 index plunging 48% in the space of six months.
To put this into perspective, this is even worse than the last bond bear market.
Happy Friday everyone. I hope everybody is doing well. Post any photos, memes, or music you like.
It's been a little toasty the last few days with temps in the mid 90s. Yesterday the Nation Weather Service issued a heat advisory that will be in effect until tomorrow night and temps will remain high until Tuesday before it starts to cool off.
Filled up the car yesterday, $5.85 for a gal of regular. It was $6.09 at the Shell station just down the street from where I filled up. So glad I ditched my gas guzzler for a hybrid last year.
This time of year the Damselflies and Dragonflies are out in numbers so I've made three visits to Santee Lakes in the last week to photograph them. So far I've only seen one species of Damselfly, the Rambur's Forktail. Most of those have been blue but I did see a few orange ones. I saw five different species of Dragonflies and managed to get shots of three of them. I spotted both the Black Saddlebags and Western Pondhawk but wasn't able to get any shots of them, but I did get shots of the Blue-eyed Darner, Common Green Darner, and Female Variable Darner.
Blue-eyed Darner
Some quick thoughts on governmental reformation.
Remove the money from politics.
This is about a recent post by Code Pink:
There has been some confusion about an image that was taken w/ CODEPINK volunteers & Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green. MTG opportunistically approached our volunteers in a parking lot on the Hill and she requested they take a photo together (1/4)
On the eve of yet another foreign occupation of Haiti,I thought that it was a good time to answer this question.
There is no one reason, and I don't want to downplay the responsibility for the corrupt Haitian elite.
However, we should not ignore the responsibility of the international community either.
` O.K... WAY back at the end of May, I tried making a post about our recent lack of real Presidents, in this country. I've been quite STUPID levels of BUSY, but finally went back and looked at the replies I got. I probably should have just let it lay there, and bleed out, but I'm so full of opinions about our last two Presidents, and I TRIED to make it light-hearted and brief, and walk away, but I'm lousy at doing that with stuff I care about...
Unexpected Sorrow:
Two deaths last week really, really got to me. Earthling1's son died tragically and then there was this... The entity who died was famous, had lived a LONG time in service to a nation, was iconic for location and meaning and was even pictured in a famous movie (Robin Hood). I knew about this marvelous being from the time I was fairly small, part of my schooling and upbringing. And no, it wasn't a politician. Sorry, DiFi, even though I was raised in the Bay Area and am old enough to have watched you take over when Milk and Moscone were assassinated (I was just a kid, but whatever), you NEVER got my approval - not as mayor, or anything else. I could see through the schtick even then.
The tree in the Sycamore Gap: from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/260505159680195096/
