Steve

Apple tried to charge us for Apple Care on both children's phones today. Two different credit cards. Neither phone ever had Apple Care, we always decline. There's no way to report it to Apple since both charges were stopped as suspicious.

Trump just got exposed for running the biggest insider trading operation in American history. Nancy Pelosi traded $5 million in stocks and Congress lost its mind. Trump literally executed $750 MILLION worth of stock trades in ONE quarter while being President. His ethics filing just dropped and the numbers are genuinely unprecedented in history: Between January and March 2026, Donald Trump personally executed 3,700 individual stock transactions worth between $220 million and $750 million. That's roughly 60 trades PER DAY. While signing executive orders, meeting foreign leaders, and making policy decisions that directly impact the companies he's buying and selling. Now here's where it gets really insane: On February 10, Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million worth of Dell stock. Three months later, on May 8, he stood at a Mother's Day event at the White House, thanked Michael Dell by name, and told Americans to "go out and buy a Dell." Dell stock surged 14.6% that day to an all-time high of $263.99. Since Trump's February purchase, Dell is up 96%. And 5 months BEFORE Trump bought Dell stock, Michael and Susan Dell donated $6.25 billion to Trump Accounts, one of the largest philanthropic commitments to a sitting president's signature program in modern history. So the timeline goes: Dell donates $6.25 billion to Trump's program -> Trump buys Dell stock ->Trump tells America to buy Dell from the White House podium -> Stock hits all-time high And that's just ONE stock... The same filing shows Trump bought Nvidia stock on February 10. One week later, Nvidia announced a massive chip deal with Meta. He bought more Nvidia stock one week BEFORE his own Commerce Department approved the sale of Nvidia chips to Saudi Arabia. He bought Intel stock starting in March 2026. The US government already owned a 9.9% stake in Intel worth over $41 billion. On April 30, Trump posted on Truth Social praising Intel, writing that "Intel Stock continues to rise." Intel jumped 3% in after-hours and is now up 140% year-to-date. He bought Palantir stock while his administration was actively handing them billion-dollar government contracts for immigration enforcement and defense. He bought Robinhood stock while his own Trump Accounts program uses Robinhood as the broker. He's currently sitting on over 100% profit on AMD, Intel, Bloom Energy, Marvell Technology, and at least 10 other positions. Every single president since Lyndon B. Johnson has used a blind trust to avoid exactly this situation. But Trump didn't. His assets sit in a trust controlled by his own children, and the filings show a broker acted as agent on several trades. The White House says the portfolio is "independently managed." But here's what independently managed looks like: Buy Dell stock. Three months later, publicly endorse Dell from the White House. Stock hits all-time high. Buy Nvidia stock. One week later, your own government approves their chip sales. Stock rips. Buy Intel stock. Post about Intel on Truth Social. Stock jumps. The government you run already owns a 10% stake. Buy Palantir. Hand them contracts. Buy Robinhood. Route a federal program through their platform. Nancy Pelosi got absolutely destroyed for her husband's stock trades. Her husband's total disclosed trades in his most controversial year were worth roughly $5 million. Trump just disclosed up to $750 MILLION in a single quarter. While making the actual policy decisions that move these stocks. This isn't a left or right issue. We're talking about the President of the United States averaging 60 stock trades per day in companies his own administration regulates, contracts with, and publicly endorses. What do you think?

You used to sell stuff on eBay. Maybe an old camera. Maybe Beanie Babies. Maybe a coat that didn't fit. You paid a small fee. The buyer got the thing. Everyone went home. That eBay is gone. The website looks the same. The logo is the same. The 135 million buyers are still there. But the company isn't really a marketplace anymore. It is an advertising business with a marketplace attached for distribution. Last year, sellers paid eBay $2 billion just to make sure their own listings showed up. Read that again. The board calls this growth. A Canadian who runs a video game store called it something else. Here is what actually happened. In 2020 the board hired a new CEO. His name is Jamie Iannone. He arrived with a strategy called focused categories. In plain English, that means leaning into the stuff people pay extra for. Sneakers. Watches. Trading cards. Auto parts. The everyday seller, the person with the camera and the coat, was no longer the customer. The customer was now the seller who would pay to be seen. In 2025 eBay did $80 billion in transactions. They kept $11 billion of that as revenue. Of that $11 billion, $2 billion came from advertising. Sellers paid them $2 billion to promote listings on a website those sellers already pay fees to use. That is the growth story. In the same year, the number of enthusiast buyers, eBay's own term for their best customers, was 16 million. It was also 16 million the year before. And the year before that. And the year before that. Four years. Zero growth. They mention this on every earnings call without mentioning it. So what does a company do when growth stops? It buys back its own stock. In 2025, eBay returned over $3 billion to shareholders. Most of that was buybacks. In February the board authorized another $2 billion on top. Buybacks shrink the share count. Earnings per share goes up even when earnings stay flat. The stock price follows. The stock was $68 a year ago. It is $108 today. The company did not improve. The denominator got smaller. Then a man from Canada noticed. His name is Ryan Cohen. He runs GameStop. He started his career selling pet food online and sold it to PetSmart for $3.35 billion. He looked at eBay. 135 million buyers. $80 billion in transactions. Real margins. Real cash flow. A board harvesting the business instead of running it. He bought 5% of the company through derivatives and stock. Then on May 4, he offered to buy the rest. $125 per share. $56 billion total. On May 12, the eBay board rejected the bid. They called it not credible. The math is credible. What the board means by not credible is we would have to explain why we sold. Then Cohen went on Piers Morgan. He said eBay is run by a bunch of losers with perverse financial incentives. He pointed out that eBay's CEO has been paid $144 million over six years. He pointed out that he personally takes no salary and has put $128 million of his own money into the company he runs. You do not have to like Ryan Cohen to notice he is making a point that is hard to argue with. eBay used to be a place where regular people sold things to other regular people. Now it is a $48 billion company whose largest growth driver is charging its own sellers to advertise to a buyer base that stopped growing four years ago, while spending billions a year buying its own stock to make the chart go up. The board calls this strategy. A video game CEO from Canada called it what it is. The market is now waiting to see who else agrees. Plz fix. Thx. Sent from my iPhone

@mil000 Context? I have no idea what these words mean.

are we seriously gatekeeping high schools

@tottinge I’m really tired of nihilism in entertainment.

"Maudlin" is a good word. I prefer to have more television shows be less maudlin, but apparently "good television" is both maudlin and violent these days. Whether it expresses the desires of the public or of the sponsors, I'm unsure.

@moinulmoin @voicetypr Got the Pro License. Nice program. I never get a space after the last sentence. Also sometimes the modal loses the left nav bar, and you're stuck in settings, requires restart.

JUST IN: Squadron of US tankers have taken off from Israel, heading toward Iran.

@bryan_caplan Obviously. It has been for years already.

Barely related, but yes, I'll bet against that too! Massive subsidies, philanthropy, and conformity signaling will keep academia afloat even if its obsolescence is obvious. Indeed, its obsolescence is already obvious.

Could someone please build a Chrome extension that would track a Claude web conversation and estimate token usage like a gas gauge. Please.

Companies looking for a Scrum Master with AI experience are like patients looking for a thoracic surgeon with must-have experience in treating left-handed redheads from Maine.

Hershey’s, your chocolate was always the worst, cheapest garbage. But you have ruined — *ruined* Reese’s. It’s awful. You destroyed an American institution.

Dear Daelmans, please make a Stroopwafels cereal. Name your price.

@tottinge I’ve been on this tangent for a while now. What I see teams do is not “Sprint Planning”, but “Sprint Scheduling”. No one actually talks about how to do the work, with all the brains there in the same space.

Can you pinpoint when and where the meaning of "planning" drifted to "assigning tickets to individuals on the team"? Seriously, how is that "planning"?

My wife went to Monte Carlo, literally. Don’t even run one simulation.

Anyone who claims they don’t bop when Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby” comes on is a liar.

Favorite Christmas song: The Waitresses, “Christmas Wrapping”.

Unused capacity is a moral failure. Time is an accusation.