kenny

Here's my monthly media recap. Notes are recorded in my phone and then made into simple HTML with Claude. No frills, low quality commentary, but I like to document what I read/listen to. Here it is:

• 7/1/2026
  • Money Stuff: Susquehanna Sold Some Suspicious Puts (Matt Levine): Susquehanna is suing because it couldn't possibly lose to retail traders (they probably did have insider information, but I still don't like the precedent). Link
• 7/2/2026
  • Chip Off The Old Block (ACX): Scott's reflections on parenting (with feudal analogies and, as always, an excellent swipe at the New York Times). Link
  • Reading Moby Dick (Chris Arnade): A nice overview of Moby Dick's background, reception. Chris is right to point out an underrated aspect of Melville: his humor. Link
• 7/6/2026
  • 100 John Does (Odd Lots podcast): Matt and Katie recap the Susquehanna Chinese brokerage insider trading lawsuit and discuss Matt's recent obsession: a sports-gambling ETF. Link
• 7/7/2026
  • Money Stuff: Untruth Machines (Matt Levine): On using streaming bots to manipulate Kalshi markets. Also, an excellent list of reasons people buy memecoins: humor, community, hope to profit from greater fools, confusion. Link
• 7/8/2026
  • Money Stuff: Index Traders Had a Good Month (Matt Levine): An excellent overview of how indexes acquire stocks like SpaceX. Link
• 7/9/2026
  • The Fall and Rise of Screwworm (Brian Potter of Construction Physics): The screwworm, whose larvae feed on the live flesh of livestock, was once a scourge in the southwest US. It was eliminated in the mid-20th century by dropping sterilized males in affected areas, ultimately pushing the screwworm frontier back to the Darien Gap. In the past few years the screwworm has broken containment and returned north, likely due to interruptions during Covid and a surge of migration in Central America. Link
  • What a Forgotten 100-Year-Old Government Report Says About Who We Are (Derek Thompson): An excellent overview of the 1920s report "Recent Social Trends," with parallels to the present. Link
  • Money Stuff: GameStop Has Enough Stock Now (Matt Levine): Can Polymarket avoid being sued by US residents if they're illegally using the non-US portion of the platform? We may found out due to a lawsuit over the controversial resolution of a market on whether Strategy would sell bitcoin. Link
• 7/10/2026
  • Money Stuff: Leave the Oil in the Pipes (Matt Levine): Oil is a famously difficult commodity: "voluminous and oozy and poisonous and flammable and smelly." The traditional method of dealing with this from an investment perspective is to keep buying futures and rolling them before the delivery date. A startup is trying to create an oil token that does not have physical delivery and is mostly tied to oil inventory that sits inside the pipelines and machinery anyway. Link
  • Kakistocracy (Scott Sumner): A review of Richard Hanania's new book on populism. Link
• 7/11/2026
  • Budge's 2026 College Football Preview Magazine: It's preview season! With two months until the season begins, I'm getting back in tune with CFB. This is a nice digital magazine that you can get for free. Link
• 7/12/2026
  • I have never been working class (Noah Smith): Noah Smith on why class in America is different from Europe: "Class in some countries is about the past; you can be a shabby aristocrat if your grandfather was the Earl of Whatevershire. In American policy discussions, class is often implicitly about the present — where you lie in the income and wealth distributions this year. But on some level, everyone knows that class in America is really about the future." Link
• 7/13/2026
  • US-Iran ceasefire breaks, OpenAI releases GPT-5.6, China and the US consider AI trade restrictions (Sentinel Global Risks Watch): Well boys, looks war in Iran is back on the menu! Link
• 7/14/2026
  • Money Stuff: ETFs Are for Bets (Money Stuff): Just as Matt predicted, there's a proposed sports gambling ETF. Link
• 7/15/2026
  • Money Stuff: Banks Made a Lot of Money on Stocks (Matt Levine): The equities divisions of major US banks are breaking records. Matt nearly summarizes three main ways that banks make money from stocks: market making, margin lending, and equity capital markets (helping corporate clients sell stock, like in an IPO). Link
• 7/16/2026
  • Why I didn't sign the "We Must Act Now" statement (yet) (Noah Smith): Noah explains that he didn't sign the statement since it's vague, he doesn't necessarily want to be associated with addenda, and he doesn't agree with Acemoglu regarding the effects AI may have on the economy. He believes AI is a security threat, but not necessarily an economic one. Link
  • 12 questions for the center-left (Nate Silver): Pressing questions for the center-left, if it exists. I'd love for the US to have a proper "liberal" party, but it won't happen without proportional representation (at least). Link
  • a theory of invention; or why you're an inventor too (Daniel Frank): Daniel Frank on how compilation, recombination, etc. can have value and be called invention: "So my theory of invention is that anyone can do this: taking things that already exist — whether it is a time zone, a legal technicality, or a set of hiking trails — and creating a new conceptual framing that makes the underlying structure more accessible to others and creates new value." Link
• 7/17/2026
  • Money Stuff: Shorts Will Sell You SpaceX (Matt Levine): I don't understand why small managers would sell their ideas to larger funds for just $10,000–couldn't they make so much more keeping them for themselves, even with a fraction of the capital of the larger funds? Coaching and the other benefits mentioned seem nebulous. Link
• 7/18/2026
  • The data center backlash isn't just NIMBYism (Matt Yglesias): A decent mailbag post with takes Mamdani/Trump comparisons, why nobody wants to be a politician, data center opposition, and more. Link
• 7/19/2026
  • The American suburbs are better than you think (Noah Smith): While many urbanists are hostile to suburbs (anecdotally, I often I hear complaints about car culture), they're actually not so bad, says Noah. Despite their reputation for sprawl, the suburbs enable Americans to have some of the shortest commutes to work in the developed world. They also seem to be better for raising kids. A key point from Noah: we should build more Manhattan's so that those who want the urban experience can afford to live in dense cities; this will also make the suburbs more affordable for those who prefer that environment. Link
  • How Semaglutide Made Me More Human (Desmolysium): A nice experience report on semaglutide. Like usual, Desmolysium was using it before it was cool. Link
• 7/21/2026
  • Money Stuff: Ice Cream Hedging (Matt Levine): The latest in Kalshi hedging: ice cream store owners betting on the weather to smooth losses during cold snaps. Link
• 7/22/2026
  • Money Stuff: LSE Will Trade 22.83 Hours a Day (Matt Levine): I feel like Matt whenever Polymarket is mentioned, questioning how it can operate in the US when it's clearly illegal. Link
• 7/23/2026
  • Contra Pritchard On Liberal Happiness (ACX): Why aren't we happier despite unprecedented economic abundance? Per Scott: "The elegant mathematical response is: happiness scales with log(income), not with income." This sounds convincing to me and I would think that relative wealth also plays a part; it's not how rich you are in absolute terms, but how well off you are compared to your neighbor, friend, or the billionaire on the news. Link
  • Money Stuff: The SEC Pays a Texting Fine (Matt Levine): After zealously pursuing financial firm employees who used personal phones to communicate about work, the SEC "accidentally deleted" all of Gary Gensler's texts that were relevant to Coinbase. The wealthy are taking advantage of ETFs: "A 351 sees an investor turn a portfolio of assets into an ETF, typically so they can rebalance winning holdings without paying an immediate tax bill – a handy maneuver for anyone who has found themselves with a concentrated position in one company or a few stocks." Link
• 7/24/2026
  • Money Stuff: Sports Happen So Much (Matt Levine): Truth Social has floated the idea of an API offering quicker access to posts from Trump and other administration members. The proposed cost: $100,000 per month. This isn't insider trading, but that doesn't mean it isn't wrong. Link
• 7/27/2026
  • Worried Noises (Money Stuff podcast): Matt and Katie recap topics from the week including 351 exchanges (you too can own the ETF of the hot pockets family!), Gary Gensler's hypocrisy, and the upcoming Truth API. Link
• 7/28/2026
  • Money Stuff: A Merger Closing Mystery (Matt Levine): Single stock futures for retail investors are back. NYC needle exchanges can be added to a long and illustrious history of arbitrage opportunities. Link
• 7/29/2026
  • Money Stuff: Elevators Won't Repair Themselves (Matt Levine): One small advantage of Kalshi over traditional sportsbooks is that hobbyists (rather than institutions) can take the other side of dumb parlays. Link
• 7/30/2026
  • Highlights From The Discourse On The Hugging Face Incident (ACX): I mostly disagree with Scott, but I sympathize with his concern about tail risks. Generally, I think we're correct to be worried about cybersecurity risks, but not existential risks. A pause seems both silly and impossible. I'm also suspicious of Altman using the recent incident as marketing. Link
  • The ordinary sublime of the American diner (Henry Oliver): A love letter to pecan pie and the American diner. Link