michael k spayd jr
2.7K posts
michael k spayd jr
@mspayd
#SystemicConsciousness facilitator. Spiritual-political warrior. Democracy depends on us all. Awaken. Author - #AgileTransformation
Richmond, VA เข้าร่วม Ekim 2008
2.8K กำลังติดตาม4.1K ผู้ติดตาม
michael k spayd jr รีทวีตแล้ว
Bernie’s curiosity about this technology is great.
Sen. Bernie Sanders@SenSanders
I spoke to Anthropic’s AI agent Claude about AI collecting massive amounts of personal data and how that information is being used to violate our privacy rights. What an AI agent says about the dangers of AI is shocking and should wake us up.
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michael k spayd jr รีทวีตแล้ว
Every single day that this war goes on, the more the economic damage just compounds. This is the key line right here from @tracyalloway bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
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.@jamestalarico has FINALLY addressed those vegan accusations!
Watch his interview on the Bulwark Podcast with @Timodc from last night’s live show in Dallas right now if you're a Bulwark+ subscriber!
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michael k spayd jr รีทวีตแล้ว
Reminder: Moscow is the single greatest beneficiary of the Iran War.
Credit where due, the Trump admin had actually seriously squeezed the Russian oil trade over the past ~6+ months.
And now all the progress have been unwound in 2 weeks.
First Squawk@FirstSquawk
INDIA BUYS OVER 30M BARRELS OF STRANDED RUSSIAN OIL – WSJ
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michael k spayd jr รีทวีตแล้ว
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…
Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡@shanaka86
Right now, in barns and equipment sheds across the American Midwest, farmers are making the most consequential decision of this war. Not generals. Not senators. Farmers. At $683 per ton urea, corn economics have collapsed. Nitrogen is the single largest input cost for corn production. At pre-war prices a farmer could justify 180 pounds per acre and expect a margin. At $683 the math breaks. Soybeans fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere through root bacteria. They do not need the molecule trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz. The seed decision is being made this week across roughly 90 million acres of American cropland. Once the planter rolls into the field, the choice is irreversible. Corn seed in the ground stays corn. Soy seed stays soy. The acreage allocation locks in. USDA Prospective Plantings reports March 31. That report will tell the world how American agriculture responded to the Hormuz blockade. But the decisions it captures are being made now, in conversations between farmers and agronomists and seed dealers who are looking at nitrogen prices and making the rational economic choice: plant the crop that does not need the input you cannot afford. Every acre that shifts from corn to soybeans tightens the corn balance sheet for the rest of the year. Corn feeds livestock. Corn feeds ethanol. The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually, consuming roughly 43 percent of the US corn crop regardless of price. That demand is inelastic. If acres shift and production falls while the mandate holds, corn prices spike. Feed costs spike. The protein cascade reverses. The US cattle herd sits at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low. Poultry and pork margins that were benefiting from cheap feed compress when corn crosses $5 per bushel. This is how a naval blockade 7,000 miles from Iowa reaches the American grocery shelf. Not through oil. Not through shipping. Through nitrogen. The farmer cannot afford the molecule. The molecule cannot transit the strait. The farmer plants soy instead. The corn supply tightens. The ethanol mandate consumes its fixed share. The remaining corn reprices. The feed reprices. The meat reprices. The grocery bill reprices. The decision is not political. It is arithmetic performed on a kitchen table by a person who needs to plant in three weeks and cannot wait for a ceasefire, an escort convoy, or an insurance normalisation that the Red Sea precedent says takes years. The deepest penetrator in the American arsenal cannot reach a sealed Iranian doctrinal packet. But the fertiliser price it failed to resolve is reaching every planting decision on 90 million acres of the most productive farmland on Earth. The war’s most irreversible consequence is not happening in a bunker. It is happening in a barn. And by the time USDA publishes the data on March 31, the seeds will already be in the ground. Full analysis in the link. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
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michael k spayd jr รีทวีตแล้ว
David's polling here is incredible and deserves way more attention.
A majority of all voters, including 50% of Trump voters, are now in favor of publicly-funded job creation and healthcare to protect workers against AI-related job loss.
David Shor@davidshor
Even among Trump voters, helping workers who lose jobs to AI beats giving tech companies incentives to keep innovating 50% to 24%. Overall it's 58-20.
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michael k spayd jr รีทวีตแล้ว
Did you know that 6 months ago, while presumably we were planning this stupid war, the Navy decommissioned its four Avenger-class minesweepers that had been stationed in Bahrain precisely to deal with Iranian mines in the Strait? More from JVL.
thebulwark.com/p/our-low-iq-p…
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Will we listen now?
I reminded him of his 13-year-old daughter. 🤢🤮🤬 youtube.com/shorts/TlGsIs0… via @YouTube
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'This is about racism': Texas Rep. Ann Johnson's blunt message to GOP ov... youtube.com/shorts/GCcddd7… via @YouTube
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If a parent texts their child about anything other than an urgent health crisis during school hours the principal should confiscate the parent’s devices for one week.
Matthew Zeitlin@MattZeitlin
teachers are truly braver than the troops, i don't understand how anyone does the job anymore
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@ZelenskyyUa President Zelenskyy, your statesman-like and partnering style has catalyzed Europe to stand strong and begin to come into its own. You are a model of leadership.
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Our main goal is a reliable and lasting peace for Ukraine and for the whole of Europe. And it is important that the momentum of all our meetings lead to precisely this result. We understand that we shouldn't expect Putin to voluntarily abandon aggression and new attempts at conquest. That is why pressure must work, and it must be joint pressure – from the United States and Europe, and from everyone in the world who respects the right to life and the international order.
We must stop the killings, and I thank our partners who are working toward this and ultimately toward a reliable and dignified peace. Together with the leaders of Finland, the United Kingdom, Italy, the European Commission, and the NATO Secretary General, we coordinated our positions ahead of the meeting with President Trump. Ukraine is ready for a real truce and for establishing a new security architecture. We need peace.
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Epstein Survivor Jess Michaels Is Not Afraid to Say His Name youtube.com/shorts/l-Gvh0U… via @YouTube
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NEW: @Lauren_V_Egan joins @SarahLongwell25 to discuss her recent piece on how August has been hazardous to recent presidencies, whether Trump will fall victim to the trend, and how Democrats are trying to ensure that he will:
thebulwark.com/p/august-turns…
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