Sunday, May 31, 2026
Because he's Mad King Ludwig, that's why
Fentanyl BAAAAAAAAAAD, Ecstasy GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.
Why Trump reversed course to fast-track psychedelic drugs for mental healthcare
Saturday, May 30, 2026
Meanwhile CNBC has an excellent story with great interactive graphs of vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait before and after the Houthi and Iran conflicts
And it's quite clear that the Iran war has had no real effect on the number of vessel transits through the Bab-el-Mandeb while destroying transits through the Strait of Hormuz.
Increased Saudi reliance on Yanbu on the Red Sea might change BAM transits in the future, but to what extent transits through SoH might recover is very difficult to say.
BAM transits never recovered from the Houthi threat, and SoH transits may not from the Iran threat, with serious implications not just for oil but for important bulk materials like fertilizer and helium.
SoH transits:
Feb 24 2026: 107.29
Apr 18 2026: 12.57
May 24 2026: 6.00
BAM transits:
May 24 2023: 82.86
Feb 26 2026: 40.14
May 24 2026: 38.14
Oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz might not return to levels seen before the Iran war
... Daily traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, collapsed by more than half from 75 ships on Nov. 19, 2023 to 31 vessels by January 30, 2024. More than two years later, traffic through the strait still has not returned to the levels once considered normal. ...
Quite the howler from CNBC this morning: Closure of Strait of Hormuz keeps 100 million barrels a day from reaching global markets lol
Global oil production in 2025 was about 106 million barrels per day.
The Persian Gulf share of that was about 31 million barrels per day.
Analysis: The Iran war has made inequality worse. An end won’t fix it
Friday, May 29, 2026
When 86 is the good news
The sum of the average prices of five ingredients for your April 2018 BLT (bacon, lettuce, tomato, lightly toasted white bread in butter) is 86-cents less in April 2026 than it otherwise would have been if it had increased as much as overall inflation has increased, up 27% instead of 33%.
Don't spend it all in one place.
Jeff Bezos disposed of some your personal income last night lol
I mean, you blow yours on fireworks, why shouldn't he?
Thursday, May 28, 2026
Middle East tanker transits May 21-27, 2026: Strait of Hormuz 2.3/day, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait 15.6/day
SoH E averages 1.3/day
BAM SE averages 7.3/day
Trump inflation is Bush-league: PCE inflation goes boing, core PCE inflation 3.3% year over year takes us back to early 1992
And you remember what happened to Bush 41 in 1992.
 |
| boing |
 |
| Trump's core pce inflation is Bush-league (41!) |
Real GDP in 1Q2026 second estimate revised lower from 2.0% annualized to 1.6% annualized "primarily reflecting downward revisions to investment and consumer spending" lol
I guess those trillion$ Trump said were coming into the country have not come in, and consumer spending is higher only because everything costs so damn much more due to inflation.
May 21: Consumers are still spending, but cracks are starting to show
Dec 5: Trump touts over $20 trillion in new U.S. investments, but the numbers don't add up
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A191RL1Q225SBEA: 1Q1984-1Q2026 Trend |
Uganda closes border with Congo where as many as 220 already may be dead from Ebola
... The number of suspected cases in eastern Congo is nearing 1,000, with at least 220 suspected deaths. Congo’s health ministry on Tuesday said 101 cases have been confirmed, and they are looking into over 3,000 possible contacts. ...
More.
Wednesday, May 27, 2026
Donald Trump is the leader of the Party of Violence
... MMA was once considered so savage that at the turn of the century, unlike pornography and other controversial fare, it wasn’t even carried on pay-per-view in many places. Now, the UFC is so mainstream that CBS, a network that on Saturday nights once aired Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, is showing Swanson club Landwehr’s cranium with his right hand, knocking him out in the first round. ... The UFC packs arenas around the world, and the most powerful person on the planet, right beside White, is its promoter in chief. ... Across the room [of White's office in Vegas] are two pistols. One barrel is cloaked in a red bible cover, the other in a black one. “Those two books have killed more people than any handgun ever made,” says White. “I am very antireligion.” ...
When I was a kid we used to laugh at boys with girly names like Dana.
Maybe Dana White's masculinism is as simple as that.
The good news is that the phony Chip Roy lost, the bad news is that the crook Ken Paxton won
But! it will not be without humor, and with any luck Cornyn will serve out his term impeding Trump's impulses.
Nothing screams conservatism like production and consumption
FDR merely gave you a check every month in your retirement, but conservatives gave you gas.
Tuesday, May 26, 2026
Middle East tanker transits May 19-25, 2026: Strait of Hormuz 2.4/day, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait 16.4/day
The table shown below is from JMIC Update 50.
The previous update was JMIC Update 48, the table in which in comparison with the one in 47 looked hopelessly screwed up, so I guess they just skipped an Update 49 and started fresh on May 19 lol.
There is no overlap in the table in 50 with the previous table, which has been the customary procedure from update to update.
BAM NW averages 8.7/day, BAM SE 7.7/day.
Keep in mind NW tankers which transit north to fill at Yanbu, then leave and transit south again can thus become SE transits in addition to NW transits in the totals. Most of these tankers are making this round trip, and most of them are 2-million barrel capacity very large crude carriers which sail in empty and sail out again full.
SoH E transits average just 1.6/day.
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