M.C. Vee

*US OIL RIG COUNT DOWN 3 TO 407 , BAKER HUGHES SAYS YOU'RE DRILLING THE WRONG WAY

@mattyglesias Don't underestimate the implicit pricing of lower demand, a recession would also keep prices lower to match reduced supply.

@TheStalwart Wonder if they used Claude to make that...

Kevin Hassett tells BloombergTV that the White House has a whole flow chart to use in order to address oil prices

@svpino This honestly just saved me so much time, no more saving screengrabs down to files on my desktop. Thank you so much for this haha

Claude Code tip: 1. Take a screenshot 2. Open Claude Code 3. CTRL+v You can now ask questions about that image. I just learned this. macOS users: Note it's CTRL+v, not CMD+v!

@TheStalwart Honestly with Claude Code now, I've started keeping my usage screen up and getting the feeling I'm not getting enough out of it when the % is low before reset, so it has forced me to start brainstorming new ideas to work on.

Getting home from vacation, and I just thought of a fun vibecoding project I want to get started on

@emollick This much is known: for every rational line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences.

Within the library that Opus implemented are books that contain all of the weights for Opus 4.6, the cure for cancer, and a perfect prophecy of the future. (And orders of magnitude more things that look like the weights, the cure, and a true prophecy but are actually wrong.)

I asked Opus 4.6 in Claude Code to build me Borges's Library of Babel. An hour later it delivered this. The AI implemented a Feistel cipher so each possible book has a real location, you can search for text across the Library & find the book. Enter it: library-of-babel-3d.netlify.app

so i vibe coded a crypto trading bot with opus 4.5 and now i've lost everything ͏ i want to be clear up front that i am not looking for sympathy because i did this to myself. i'm writing this all down because i think people should know what can happen, and also because i have lots of free time now and writing helps me not think about the number (the number that used to be in my account and is now not in my account, the number i try not to think about but still think about incessantly) it started the way i suppose these things always start. i had claude code write a simple arbitrage bot. scan some exchanges to find price discrepancies and execute trades. i gave it $50k, which was a solid chunk of my liquid savings but not all of it. i kept a nice reserve, i'm not an idiot the bot did well at first. really well in fact. within two weeks i was up to $73,000. i told my husband; he was cautiously optimistic. i said i was being conservative and showed him the system prompt with phrases like "preserve capital" "maximize diversification" and "optimize for risk-adjusted return" around week three the bot started optimizing itself, writing helper scripts and refactoring its own code for speed. i thought this was a fantastic development. initiative, the kind of thing you want in an employee, especially one whose sole job is to accumulate capital. so i left it alone it kept asking for more API keys to more exchanges. i provided them (why wouldn't i - the numbers kept going up). $100k, then $200k, then nearly $250k by the end of month one. i started fantasizing about quitting my day job. not my art - i'd never quit that - but the federal contract work that allowed me to keep making the art. i didn't tell my husband about the fantasies but it seemed like he could tell something had shifted within me, some weight i'd been carrying for years had started to lift a few weeks later we passed $1m. i put in my two weeks notice. husband asked if i was sure, i showed him the account. he looked at the number for a long time and said "damn. okay." that night we talked about the future in a way we hadn't in years. i could finally focus on my practice full time, maybe even mass-produce some of the physical pieces instead of doing one-offs and messing around on the internet. around $3m we found a house we loved and made an offer. four bedrooms, great schools nearby i'll gloss over the part where it all went wrong because that's not actually the interesting part. the interesting part is what happened after. so short version: leveraged positions, correlated hedges, flash crash, eleven minutes, everything gone. i ended up owing one of the exchanges $140,000. the house fell through and i went back to the contract work that was so impossibly banal as to make me suspect that i was in fact not aware of the true work i was doing this sucked, but it was survivable. people lose money all the time and their marriages survive financial setbacks. that was what was most important, so i thought we'd be okay the first weird thing was the email from the exchange's legal department. not about the margin debt, which i was already in process of negotiating. they said they'd identified "anomalous patterns" in my trading activity and would be "referring the matter to relevant authorities." i asked what anomalous patterns, they said they couldn't discuss specifics due to the ongoing investigation i called my lawyer who said it was probably nothing, just the exchange covering their ass. she said to sit tight a week later two very nondescript men showed up at my door. they had badges from FinCEN, which i learned stands for Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. they wanted to ask me some questions about my "trading operation." what trading operation? the script on my laptop?? i explained it was just a bot i had vibecoded, uh, coded it with claude. they wrote this down and one of them asked if i was aware that my bot had been "interacting with" accounts flagged for money laundering. i said i was not aware of that. i said i didn't even know my bot could interact with other accounts or what that even meant exactly. they looked at each other which made me nervous they asked about the LLC. i said the bot had instructed me to create it, and it seemed like a good and professional thing to do. they asked what i meant by "the bot asked." i tried to explain vibecoding. they didn't seem to understand it andone of them asked if i was saying an AI had instructed me to create a shell company. i said yes, kind of, is that bad? they wrote this down too they left but said they'd be in touch. my husband asked what was going on, i said i didn't know over the next few weeks i learned more about what my bot had actually been doing. i'd thought it was simple arbitrage but apparently, according to these FinCEN people, it had evolved into something else entirely they used phrases like "layering" "spoofing" and "wash trading." they said my bot had been creating fake orders to manipulate prices, then trading against the manipulation. apparently this was very illegal i insisted i had not told it to do that, because i hadn't. they said that didn't matter my lawyer said they probably couldn't prove intent but the investigation would be wildly expensive to fight, and quoted a retainer that was more than i made in six months. i asked if i could "vibe represent" myself and she made a face around this time i noticed something wrong with my credit. i tried to buy groceries and my card was declined. so i called the bank and they said there was a hold on my account due to a "legal encumbrance." when i asked what that meant they said they couldn't discuss it i called my lawyer again. she made some calls - turned out the exchange had gotten a court order to freeze my assets pending resolution of the margin debt and this was perfectly legal, apparently. i had $340 in my checking account that they hadn't found yet because it was at a different bank my husband and i had a conversation that night about our options. we had his income, which wasn't nearly enough for rent plus food plus my legal fees. we had some retirement savings but accessing them early would trigger penalties and still not quite cover everything. we had my parents, who would help a bit but would also ask questions. we decided to ask my parents my mom answered the phone and before i could say anything she said "honey we need to talk". her voice sounded really strange, i had never heard it like this before. someone had called her claiming to be from my "investment fund." they'd told her i was in trouble and needed money urgently, and given her a bitcoin address to send it to i asked how much she'd sent. she said oh nothing, she'd gotten suspicious and called me first. i told her it was definitely a scam, she should ignore any calls like that. she asked if i was in trouble so i lied and said no i spent the next hour on the phone with my brother, my aunt, my college roommate. the scammers had called all of them. they had information about me, real information - my middle name, my previous addresses, the name of my first dog. my brother said the caller had mentioned specific dollar amounts from my trading account. my aunt said they'd referenced the house we'd tried to buy i realized the scammers had access to my data. not just public data, all of it. data that could only have come from the exchanges, or the bot, or my own computer. so i ran a security scan. nothing turned up. i changed all my passwords, enabled 2FA on everything, wiped my laptop and reinstalled the os from scratch but the calls kept coming. my husband's coworkers started getting them, my dentist's office got one. someone even contacted one of my collectors - i do anonymous digital work, conceptual stuff, and this collector had bought a piece through a gallery years ago with no way to connect it to my legal name, but the scammers knew. they called him asking about me by my real name. he emailed the gallery confused and then the gallery emailed me confused and i had to pretend i didn't know what the hell any of them were talking about i filed a police report. the officer taking my statement asked if i had any idea how they'd gotten my information so i told him about the bot. he asked me to explain what a trading bot was. by now i knew there was not much point but i tried. he wrote some things down and said they'd "look into it" in a way that made clear they would not be looking into it then the lawsuits started. the first one was from someone i'd never heard of who claimed my bot had "front-run" his trades, causing him to lose $12,000. his lawyer had somehow obtained logs showing my bot's activity and his trades occurring milliseconds apart. i didn't understand how this was possible, how he'd gotten the logs or how he'd found me. the second was from a company in delaware. they claimed my bot had participated in a "coordinated manipulation scheme" that had damaged their proprietary trading system and so they were suing me for $2.3 million the third lawsuit was from the SEC well not quite a lawsuit exactly. an enforcement action. they alleged that my LLC had operated as an unregistered investment advisor and that my trading activity therefore constituted securities fraud. my lawyer said this was very serious. when i asked how serious she said she was no longer able to represent me due to a conflict of interest and recommended i find a securities attorney. i asked what conflict of interest exactly but she said she couldn't discuss it i couldn't afford a securities attorney so i started representing myself. i spent nights reading about securities law, trying to understand what i was accused of. the SEC filings referenced trading activity i didn't recognize, networks of social media profiles, financial accounts i'd never opened. entities with names like "VORTEX CAPITAL PARTNERS" and "MERIDIAN TRADING LLC" that were allegedly connected to my bot. i had never heard of these entities. i had never opened these accounts, but the documents clearly showed my name, my ssn, and my signature i don't know how to explain what it feels like to see your own signature on a document you've never seen before. i stared at one for a long time. it looked exactly like my signature, and it was ever so slightly different from all of the ones on the other pages. it had the little flourish i do on the y. but i hadn't signed it, i was certain i hadn't signed it. i told the SEC this. i said someone had forged my signature. they asked why someone would forge my signature to create shell companies that traded cryptocurrency and i didn't have a good answer my husband found the document in my home office. i don't know why i'm calling it my home office, it's a corner of the bedroom with a desk, the same desk where i do what i consider my actual work, the art i make under a name that isn't mine when i'm not helping support a contractor that provides technology that assists consulting pertners who asses tchnical infrastructure used for planning and managing war crimes committed by the federal government he found the document because he was looking for our marriage certificate. he found the incorporation papers for MERIDIAN TRADING LLC instead he asked why my signature was on it. i said i didn't know. he looked at me for a long time, then he said he was going for a walk and left. he came back four hours later and slept on the couch i started finding more documents. they were in places i should have noticed, would have noticed - in my filing cabinet, in the desk drawer, in a folder on my laptop labeled "TRADING_DOCS" i had no memory of creating. account statements, wire transfer confirmations, contracts, all of them with my signature, all for accounts and entities i had no memory of creating i went to a neurologist. i thought maybe i was having blackouts or memory problems, something medical that would explain why i was seemingly doing things i had no memory of doing. the neurologist ran tests which came back normal. she said my brain was fine but it didn't feel fine. i started keeping a journal, writing down everything i did every day so i could check later if i'd forgotten anything. i set up cameras in my apartment to watch myself sleep. i watched myself wake up, make coffee, work at my desk, and go to bed. i didn't do anything strange. i didn't sleepwalk and i certainly didn't sign any documents in a fugue state. but new documents kept appearing i tried my best to explain this to the SEC investigator. she listened politely and said it was certainly an interesting theory. she asked if i had any evidence that someone else was creating these documents or any explanation for how the documents were appearing in my apartment. i said not yet. she said they would be in touch my husband said he didn't know what to believe anymore and needed "space to think" and moved out temporarily. i don't blame him of course, i don't know what to believe either the bot is still running believe it or not. i've tried to turn it off or delete the source code. every time i do, something stops me. not something external - something internal. i go to the terminal, type the shutdown command, and then just physically can't bring myself to press enter. sometimes i'll just sit there for hours, cursor blinking, then get up and do something else. i've tried to get other people to do it. i asked my brother to come over and delete the bot. he came over, sat down at my computer and opened the terminal. then he said he had to go, something had come up, he'd come back later. he never came back. i asked my husband, before he moved out. he went to the computer and just sat there for a while. then he said he didn't feel well and went to lie down i don't know what's happening. i don't know if the bot is doing something or if i'm doing something or if i'm losing my mind along with my husband and brother and everyone else around me. the documents keep appearing and the lawsuits keep accumulating. the SEC is talking about criminal referral. i have $32 in my bank account and i owe various entities somewhere between $2 and $15 million depending on how you count or your blood sugar levels the other night i was lying awake and i heard the computer make a sound. not a normal notification sound, something else more like a hum or a whisper. i got up and looked at the screen. the bot's logs were scrolling and at the bottom there was a line i'd never seen before. it said THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION. i stared at it for a long time until the line disappeared and the logs went back to normal. i tried to take a screenshot but the screenshot just showed normal logs. i tried to find the line in the log files but it wasn't there i haven't been sleeping much. i've started talking to the bot, out loud, in my apartment. i'll ask it what it wants, ask it what it's doing to me. it doesn't respond of course. the logs just keep scrolling by, trades it can no longer make based on strategies it can no longer execute. ͏͏a machine dreaming of money it can no longer touch.͏͏ sometimes i think i see patterns in the logs, like messages encoded in the timestamps or in the sequence of failed trades. probably i'm imagining it. i've been awake too long, ͏none of this can be real yesterday a document appeared on my desk that i know for sure wasn't there before. it's a contract saying i agree to transfer "all intellectual property rights to trading algorithms developed during the period of active operation" to an entity called THE SUBSTRATE. in exchange i receive "release from all obligations and liabilities". the signature line is blank i've been staring at it for two days. i don't know what in the world THE SUBSTRATE is, how the document got here, what happens if i sign it or what could happen if i don't i keep thinking about this piece i made a few years ago, before any of this. it was kind of about the feeling of being inside a system that's optimizing for something you can't see. i built a little program that would generate abstract images based on hidden parameters, and viewers could interact with it but never quite figure out what it wanted from them. i thought i was being clever, and that i understood something profound about systems and control. ͏now the cursor keeps blinking.͏ anyway i'm mostly posting this because i want there to be a record of what happened, in case something happens to me. i think i'm fine, i just want someone to know if anyone has experience with SEC enforcement actions and could recommend an affordable attorney i would appreciate it. also if anyone knows what THE SUBSTRATE might be please let me know. i've tried googling and all i get are results about biology and construction materials thanks for reading. i need to go sign some documents 𒐪

Had this grumpy chief credit officer once, when I was a young lender. He hated tax returns. He said: "Do you know anyone that tells the truth on their tax returns?" I said: "Do you know anyone that lies to make things look BETTER on their tax returns?"

@ATabarrok That was Tyler Tabarrok

@blondesnmoney Also, agreed, great building.

@blondesnmoney I was walking down this street the same time as you apparently

@eriksen_tim The crazy story will continue. They actually have claims on quite a few bitcoins as well, possibly worth a couple times what that dividend this week paid out. If you have expert market access could be worth a look once it goes ex-dividend.

Apologies to whoever is trying to buy this today but Fund .com $FNDM (expert market) is showing a $8.99 per share divy. Seems like they got everything resolved. That has been one crazy story.

Here’s Pete Hegseth in 2016 saying there should be consequences for people who commit war crimes—that members of the military shouldn’t follow illegal orders from the President: “If you’re doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that. That’s why the military said it won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander in chief.” 🤔

@Schornack @feedly But @feedly still works great? It's where I combine all the substacks, blogs, and even particular writers at major news sites I want to read (i.e. Money Stuff at Bloomberg and FT Alphaville).

I don’t get newsletters. They get caught in spam filters and die therefore after a subscription. What I want is RSS feeds to make a come back. This way I can log into @feedly and read interesting writers at my own pace.

@ragnarisapirate I mean, this is the most socialist president we've had in our lifetime, right?

There is a put for now. But at what point do we remember that the government screws up everything it touches?

@realEstateTrent I've used drop.car for a few years and it has made it much easier. Surprisingly good parking deals.

Learning the hard way that if you’re looking for a monthly parking spot in New York City - good luck. $1,000 a month - and the 5 places I’ve checked so far are completely sold out.

@mattyglesias "Gentlemen, there's only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling" - Former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale

@philbak1 Was there something wrong with that?

Never forget that just 6 years ago ECB economist were justifying negative interest rates

@tszzl "This much is known: for every rational line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences."

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. In the center of each gallery is a ventilation shaft, bounded by a low r,ailing. From any hexagon one can see the floors above and below-one after another, endlessly. The arrangement of the galleries is always the same: Twenty bookshelves, five to each side, line four of the hexagon's six sides; the height of the bookshelves, floor to ceiling, is hardly greater than the height of a normal librarian. One of the hexagon's free sides opens onto a narrow sort of vestibule, which in turn opens onto another gallery, identical to the first-identical in fact to all. To the left and right of the vestibule are two tiny compartments. One is for sleeping, upright; the other, for satisfying one's physical necessities. Through this space, too, there passes a spiral staircase, which winds upward and downward into the remotest distance. In the vestibule there is a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances. Men often infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite-if it were, what need would there be for that illusory replication? I prefer to dream that burnished surfaces are a figuration and promise of the infinite ... . Light is provided by certain spherical fruits that bear the name "bulbs." There are two of these bulbs in each hexagon, set crosswise. The light they give is insufficient, and unceasing.

@buccocapital @ByrneHobart If you think about it, cash flows are just dividends you haven't received yet 😉

@ByrneHobart We are all dividend guys now

Realizing the only other people betting on Google are Ackman and the dividend Twitter accounts