By The Book. Worms.

@Mmagnet7 @FU_joehudson Radical honesty with yourself, even when it hurts

@FU_joehudson How do you own these aspects then?

It took me decades to really grok this in my bones: If there are aspects of ourselves we cannot own, we project those aspects onto other people. The clearest way to notice this is when we are triggered, judgmental, or annoyed at other people.

@FU_joehudson @antiviral_mktng I think of this as: we are most annoyed at the people who are doing exactly what we do, but they're not even trying to be better at it.

@BartDePalma @adamscochran But we're selling our oil to the countries who usually get theirs from the region. Oil is a globally traded commodity, it goes to the highest bidder. It will continue to leave our country without government intervention

@adamscochran You can count the number of tankers sailing from the Gulf to the US on one hand with fingers left over. Almost none of our oil comes from the region.

1/3 This is why all the escalations It takes around 7 weeks for oil tankers to reach the US from the Gulf. 2-3 weeks for it to reach pumps after processing. Today starts the 10th week of the war. The last shipments to the US are now being distributed.

@DoubtedAnDenied @astr0l0gyjunk Wrong answer. This way lies despair.

@astr0l0gyjunk If nothing matters then why should it matter that terrible people are rewarded and hard work doesnt pay off?

How does everyone continue to be happy and go on when the past 5+ years has shown as that hard work does NOT pay off, being a terrible person is rewarded, & literally nothing matters ??

@Troutski__ Yeah this is a really annoying take from him. There's actual academic work on this, and the main contributing factor to a declining birth rate is women's education. Does he want to complain about how that makes us less than fully human too?

I have a degree from Cal and couldn't afford my own 100yr old studio apt in Oakland until I was 32. My parents didn't graduate college and bought their first home at 25 off my dad's retail assistant manager salary. Was it because I have a cell phone and they didn't?

@lorahmoe These airplane seat wars are the dumbest shit ever. You're both right - kids should sit with their families AND YET airlines assign seats if you're poor or can't plan ahead and those are valid reasons to ask strangers for kindness. Everyone should be kinder to each other.

I once watched a woman try to rearrange half a plane like it was musical chairs. She’s standing in the aisle, pointing at people: “You switch with her, and then you move there, and then my husband can sit here” Mind you, not a single person had agreed yet. One guy goes, “Are you offering better seats or…?” She goes, “No, but we’re a family.” And he just goes, “So are we. We planned ahead.” The silence after that? Delicious.

@ChuckDriver @jarvis_best James Kariuki

@jarvis_best I don't know, but he appears to be from the same planet as Marc Andreessen.

Who is this hero?

Would anyone else here be fine with Elon Musk being charged with 518,428 counts of Negligent Homicide?

@EnergyPulseHQ Wow that NIGAL plan looks wildly optimistic. It's not like that area is super-secure and certified free from insurgent groups

Algeria reinforcing it position as an energetic giant supplying energy to Europe #OOTT #NATGAS

@SetPixels @ProudSocialist @BlueCheckBeth Valid.

I had a pretty vivid dream the other day (day before we heard about trump wanting to launch nukes) that was typical dream bullshit with my family in it & then we saw a nuclear blast out the window so I told my fam to look away & shielded them. It was pretty terrifying. It isn’t even anything I’d been thinking about or considering possible. I don’t talk about my dreams usually, but current events got me kinda worried.

BREAKING: Andrew Hugg who is a top US nuclear chief was just escorted out of the Pentagon. What is going on?! We live in the most chaotic timeline possible and are ruled by absolute psychopaths. I don’t know how anyone can trust a single person in our government on either side.

@servingcapreal @postproctorism @roseopossum The reservoirs in Highland Park!

@postproctorism @roseopossum the graveyard belt in Brooklyn/Queens, I like the Evergreens Cemetery

nyc oomfs: any recommendations on places to wander when you’re really sad? I need to step my depression walk game up.

@postproctorism Greenwood Cemetery

@reactiveoptions @TheBillyProcida Endless growth baked into the bones of everything = structural guarantee of disaster

@TheBillyProcida Because of this legal obligation the management team has called "fiduciary responsibility". When you are on the management team of a company owned by investors you can't just fuck off and do whatever you want. Well you can, but it will land your ass in jail or with a lawsuit.

why can't multi-billion-dollar companies just make 20% less for a little while?

@angerrrrry @dieworkwear The cadence! Perfect 👌🏻

@dieworkwear Well said, AI bots have taken over this platform in ways that has completely ruined the user experience. They aren't just a nuisance, they are a tragedy.

Tweet: "fuck this brownie is so good rn" Ten immediate replies: "Well said. Brownies combine eggs, granulated sugar, and cocoa powder in a way that quietly elevates the culture. They're not just a snack, they're a vibe."

@hannahbsampson I have gone to LaGuardia when my flight was from Newark and, on a separate occasion years later, to Newark when my flight was from JFK. The first time I took a cab and it was fine. The second time it was rush hour and I took 4 trains and RAN and made it 🙃

I’ve written about this, but never seen it happen until today: TSA told people in the next lane that they were at DCA and needed to be at Dulles.

@aakib0119 @shanaka86 Bot

This is written like a dramatic “systems collapse” thread — but most of its core claims are either unverified, exaggerated, or internally inconsistent. It’s important to separate real fertilizer risks from viral narrative framing. 🚨 First: The biggest red flags 1) Strait of Hormuz “fertilizer blockade” There is no credible confirmation that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has blocked fertilizer shipments while selectively allowing oil tankers The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes — a full selective shutdown like this would: Spike global freight + insurance instantly Be confirmed by shipping trackers, insurers, and governments within hours 👉 Right now, no such verified disruption of that scale exists.

BREAKING: The nitrogen trap just closed. Three locks snapped shut simultaneously. The planting window is closing behind them. And the food the world eats next year is now being decided by molecules that cannot reach the soil in time. Lock one: the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC permissioned corridor allows oil tankers from friendly nations to pay $2 million in yuan and pass. It does not allow fertiliser vessels to pass at any price. Zero approved fertiliser transits in 24 days. The Gulf supplies 49 percent of the world’s exported urea and roughly 30 percent of traded ammonia. That supply is not delayed. It is denied. The gate opens for molecules that fund the gatekeeper. It stays closed for molecules that feed the planet. Lock two: Russia. The world’s largest exporter of ammonium nitrate just halted all AN exports until after April 21. Three to four million tonnes per year, gone from global markets at the exact moment the Northern Hemisphere needs it most. The official reason is “domestic priority.” The strategic effect is leverage. Russia earns windfall revenue from the oil price spike its ally’s war created, then removes the fertiliser that farmers need to plant through the crisis. The disease and the cure, again, from the same address. Lock three: China. Beijing has banned exports of nitrogen-potassium blends and phosphate fertilisers through August 2026. China is the world’s largest phosphate producer and a major nitrogen supplier. The ban removes the last alternative source that could have compensated for Hormuz and Russia. Three locks. Three countries. Three deliberate decisions timed to the same biological calendar. The biological calendar does not negotiate. Corn requires nitrogen at the V6 to VT growth stage or kernel set is permanently reduced. Wheat requires it at tillering and jointing or grain fill collapses. Rice requires it at transplanting or yield drops 20 to 40 percent in low-input systems. These are not economic models. They are cellular processes. The plant either receives nitrogen during the window or it does not. If it does not, no subsequent application, no price increase, no policy reversal can recover what was lost. The damage is written into the biology of the seed. The US Corn Belt window closes mid-April. European top-dressing is happening now. Indian Kharif preparation begins in May. Bangladeshi Boro rice transplanting is underway this week. Every one of these windows is closing while the three largest sources of nitrogen on Earth are simultaneously locked: Hormuz by military blockade, Russia by export decree, China by trade ban. The USDA Prospective Plantings report arrives March 31. The FAO Food Price Index publishes April 3. These will quantify what the molecules already know: the nitrogen did not arrive. The yield loss is locked in. The 5 to 10 percent global drag will concentrate where the buffers are thinnest: subsistence farms in Bangladesh, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, where a 20 percent shortfall does not mean lower profits. It means hunger. Sri Lanka banned synthetic fertiliser in 2021. Rice yields collapsed 40 percent. The government fell. In 2008, fertiliser and oil spiked simultaneously and food riots erupted across 30 countries. In 2026, the strait blocks fertiliser while Russia and China withdraw the alternatives, and the planting windows close on a planet with nowhere else to turn. The war is fought with missiles. The famine is fought with molecules. The molecules are trapped behind three locks on three continents, timed to the one calendar that cannot be paused, extended, or negotiated: the calendar written into the DNA of every seed in the soil. Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@shanaka86 Honestly asking: the EPA mandate can be changed, no?

JUST IN: The most irreversible consequence of this war is not happening in Tehran. It is happening in a barn in Iowa. A farmer is standing over a kitchen table looking at two seed catalogues. One is corn. One is soybeans. Corn needs 180 pounds of nitrogen per acre. Nitrogen costs $610 per ton on the CBOT March futures settlement as of yesterday, up 35 percent in a month. Soybeans fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere through root bacteria called rhizobia. They need nothing from the Strait of Hormuz. The farmer is choosing soybeans. Millions of acres are choosing soybeans. And once the planter rolls into the field, the choice cannot be reversed until next year. USDA projected corn at roughly 94 million acres for 2026, down from 98.8 million. Soybeans at 85 million, up from 81.2 million. Those projections were published February 19, before urea surged past $683 at New Orleans. The actual shift will be larger. USDA Prospective Plantings reports March 31. By then the seeds will be in the ground. This is the transmission channel the world is not watching. A 21-mile strait enforced by provincial commanders with sealed radio orders just rewrote the planting economics of 90 million acres of the most productive farmland on Earth. Not through sanctions. Not through diplomacy. Through the price of a single molecule that corn cannot grow without and soybeans do not need. Now follow the cascade. The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually. That consumes roughly 43 percent of the entire US corn crop. The mandate is set by the EPA. It does not flex when corn acres shrink. It is inelastic demand consuming a fixed share of a declining supply. When supply tightens against a fixed mandate, the remaining corn reprices upward. Corn above $5 per bushel compresses every margin downstream. The US cattle herd stands at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low per USDA NASS. Poultry and pork operations face compression from higher corn prices. Feed is the single largest cost in livestock production. When feed reprices, protein reprices. When protein reprices, every grocery shelf in America absorbs the increase. This is the protein cascade. Corn to feed to meat to eggs to dairy to the checkout counter. Each link tightens because the link before it tightened. The originating cause is a urea molecule that cannot transit a strait because a provincial commander’s sealed orders say it cannot. The farmer did not start this war. The farmer cannot end it. The farmer responds to the price on the screen and the biology of the two crops in front of him. Corn needs the molecule. Soybeans do not. At $610 the arithmetic is settled. The planter rolls. The season is locked. Israel just authorised the assassination of every Iranian official on sight. The US has spent $16.5 billion. South Pars is burning. The Fed is holding rates because oil inflation will not break. Gold touched $5,000. Bitcoin is bleeding. China is running exercises near Taiwan. Sri Lanka shut down on Wednesdays. And underneath all of it, a man in a barn is making the decision that determines whether four billion people pay more for food this year. He has never heard of the Mosaic Doctrine. He does not know what a sealed contingency packet is. He knows what nitrogen costs. And he is planting soybeans. Full analysis - open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@RitaNexhipi @shanaka86 Yes but also has concentrated antibiotics, antidepressants and other medications and chemical compounds.

@shanaka86 Recycle human excrement ASAP. Urine has urea and feces phosphorus.

BREAKING: The world spent fifty years and hundreds of billions of dollars building Strategic Petroleum Reserves so that no geopolitical shock could starve civilization of energy. Nobody built the equivalent for fertilizer. That is the most expensive oversight in the history of modern statecraft, and you are about to pay for it at the grocery store. The Strait of Hormuz does not merely carry 20% of global oil. UNCTAD estimates roughly one-third of all seaborne fertilizer trade passes through it. The Fertilizer Institute estimates that conflict-exposed exporters account for nearly 49% of global urea exports and nearly half of global sulfur trade. Since February 28, daily ship transits have collapsed by 97%. Here is what almost nobody understands about why this is not "just another commodity spike." It was not the missiles that closed the strait. It was the insurance. Multiple P&I clubs cancelled war-risk extensions for the Gulf after 26 months of Red Sea losses had already depleted their Solvency II capital buffers. War-risk premiums surged from 0.25% to as high as 5% of hull value per transit. A urea cargo cannot absorb that. The economics of fertilizer shipping through Hormuz became impossible before a single mine needed to detonate. The Trump administration announced a $20 billion sovereign-backed reinsurance facility with Chubb as lead underwriter. There is no confirmed public evidence that a single fertilizer vessel has used it. Insurance pays for financial loss. It does not intercept anti-ship missiles. Physical security remains the binding constraint, and the US Navy confirmed on March 12 it is "not ready" for commercial escorts. Now here is the part that should terrify every allocator on Earth. Agriculture runs on biological deadlines. Corn Belt farmers need nitrogen applied by mid-April. Indian Kharif season prep starts in May. Australian winter crop needs urea by June. These are not financial deadlines that reprice. They are photosynthetic deadlines that, once missed, produce irreversible yield loss. A diplomatic breakthrough on April 15 does not help a farmer who needed fertilizer on April 1. And the yield math is nonlinear. Wall Street models fertilizer-to-output as proportional. It is not. The response is quadratic. In developed systems that over-apply nitrogen, a 15% reduction costs 2-5% of yield. In the Global South where farmers already under-apply, the same reduction pushes crops off a biophysical cliff. Sri Lanka proved this in 2021 when a sudden fertilizer ban collapsed rice production 40% in a single season and brought down the government. The market is pricing a 45-day disruption. The insurance architecture says 120 days minimum. Even after a hypothetical ceasefire, Solvency II capital rebuild, reinsurance treaty renegotiation, and vessel re-underwriting take months. The Red Sea precedent: 26 months after Houthi attacks began, war-risk premiums never returned to pre-crisis levels. Both sides are rejecting negotiations. Trump rebuffed ceasefire mediation March 14. Iran's foreign minister on March 15: "We never asked for a ceasefire." Meanwhile: 51% of US corn areas in drought. El Nino favored by June at 62% probability. Skymet assigns 60% chance of below-normal Indian monsoon. Bangladesh has shut five of six urea factories. India formally asked China for urea on March 12. Egypt faces $28 billion in debt repayments while importing 12.7 million tonnes of wheat. WFP identifies 318 million people already at crisis-level hunger. The world stockpiled oil but forgot to stockpile the molecules that produce half its food. The clock is the position. Full analysis in the link! open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

CO₂ at Mauna Loa just reached a monthly average of >430 ppm for the first time. That's possibly higher than in over 3.3 million years. The global RATE of increase is off the chart. It's hard to exaggerate how unprecedented this is!

@yoonogy Long commutes. Almost all of my friends with kids have hour-plus commutes on public transit to live in areas that are a little bit cheaper. The rest of them left the city when they had kids. Also people have tiny/illegal apartments and don't own cars.