Slanderman, Corrupting-the-Constructive

Let’s start at the end. We’ll reach the beginning eventually.

What does this have to do with what Paragram does? Well, Ninurta “paraku” (root of “para”?), blocked, impure water or something from Anzu. Umm. Ok. Anzu was also used by a drug company to demonize IP infringement??? oracc.museum.upenn.edu/nimrud/livesof…

Many motifs first seen here would later feature in more famous texts like Gilgamesh (with a bathtime heist of a herb instead of a tablet), Babylonian “Epic of Creation”, or even much later, Hymn to Apollo, with Anzu becoming Python for Apollo to slay and gain legitimacy/power.

Should Paragram’s logo pun the twitter logo (a blend of hammer-and-sickle and the Swift bird) or the original X logo (“X” on a scratchy wax tablet—meaning either “more real” or “writing on a fluid surface”)?

Applying to be a clerk at the Library of the Central Committee instead.

To my boss at Gosplan Strategy: I need to take a time off this analyst desk. I always intend to spend no more than half an hour to find a couple tweets of things to say, but it always blows up to hours.

All of Wall Street, but not to us. Where is this “consolidated tape” of European bond trading? ft.com/content/cbf43d…

@BurggrabenH What is the best data source for energy import/export by country? The disruption will probably be highly uneven.

Demand destruction won’t fix this. The world cannot function with 10–15% less energy. We are 15mbpd short of crude & products versus my Feb baseline. If the Red Sea route remains open to the South (VLCCs) and assuming some VIP toll booths treatment (like 20 « Pakistani » vessels), it reduces to 12mbpd in April. Some of the gap is compensated with SPR releases, but with highly uneven results due to location & quality issues. During Covid, when OECD, China, and most major economies briefly shut down (Chinese literally locked people up in their apartments), demand fell by 16.5mbpd at peak, and only for a few weeks. Most demand snapped back within weeks. Demand normalized within months, adjusted for the recession and ex-jet. Gasoline, diesel, & bunker demand are highly inelastic. People don’t stop driving or shipping because prices rise. Jet and naphtha are more elastic, but cannot fix the lack of crude at the refinery level evenly. By April, some governments will learn that reopening the Strait is not optional, and that it takes real resources to do so. That’s when panic begins. This has the potential to become the mother of all crises. Respect it. It’s highly likely to get real awkward. And pay attention to the political blame game that’s already in full swing and isn’t helping. Eventually this crisis gets fixed and yes, the invisible hand of oil is incredibly powerful. But it won’t return to pre-war barrel counting anytime soon and certainly not with policies like this.

Wish I were “Europe” and could do this immediately.

If we are injecting tens of millions of dollars to their economy (firstly in the university, reinvigorating, say, the MRI project) I’m sure they’ll be amenable. They’ve done way more appeasement (eg silly vintage cars) after they had to switch to tourism. Let’s get rich first.

We are not “Europe”. What should be the policies for our comrades under these authoritarian states? “Western democracies” would leave it at “skill training”, all the details to be figured out (but never written down) by the “private sector”. oiip.ac.at/publikation/fl…