Everything is Horrible

At least this is funny.

Even after turning himself into a laughing stock in the gaming world for blatantly cheating, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hasn't given up the hobby just yet.

During a Saturday livestream of himself playing the free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2) — which allegedly served as an "airborne continuity test" of SpaceX's Starlink on board his private jet — Musk was ruthlessly bullied by other players in the game's chat, as spotted by Polygon.

After repeatedly dying to the game's first boss, Musk rage quit roughly 30 minutes into the stream.

First boss.

I think video games are a perfectly fine thing for people to enjoy, but if you are a billionaire and are obsessed with being (or being perceived as being) "the best at video games" then something is really wrong with you. Especially when you lack the self-awareness to realize you suck and then go humiliate yourself in public like this.

There are plenty of genuinely horrible things happening, but sometimes for my own mental health I need to focus on the absurdity of it all.

Morning

Show your papers, citizen.

Monday Happy Hour

A bit late.

Afternoon

Busy with some stuff

What's Happening

Lunch

Did stonks get too woke?

Mad King

Now he's threatening 50% ADDITIONAL tariffs on China.

Up Down Turnaround

Rumor went around that Trump was considering a tariff pause, but then Leavitt noped it, so back in the red we are!

Well If A CEO Says It

You know, someone who matters, not someone like me.

“This is the Trump recession.”

Those were the words of a U.S.-based chief executive officer in response to a flash survey CNBC circulated among members of its CEO Council in the days after President Trump’s sweeping tariffs announcement Wednesday.

Cascade

I suspect no one knows the risks in the financial markets. One can guess the direct real effects of tariffs, maybe even correctly, but none of these guesses take into the account the possibility of very large funds of money - and the people they owe - getting zapped because they have huge leveraged bets.

Morning

wheeeee

Sure Why Not

These guys seem kinda weird.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum likes chocolate-chip cookies—preferably freshly baked and still warm.

This peculiar fact became the talk of the Department of Interior in recent weeks after his chief of staff, JoDee Hanson, made an unusual request of the political appointees in his office: Learn to regularly bake cookies for Burgum and his guests, using the industrial ovens at the department headquarters.

In War You're Shat Upon

The small headline seems to contradict the big headline

[image or embed]

— Hamilton Nolan (@hamiltonnolan.bsky.social) April 5, 2025 at 7:36 PM

All Quiet From The EU

We are still waiting for their retaliation.

Uncertainty

Aside from the explicit cost, right now you have a bunch of firms trying to figure out if they will have an unexpected multimillion dollar bill if the ship hits port at the wrong moment.

The inevitable clusterfuck at customs means that perishable and time sensitive shipments are fucked.

Above my pay grade to extrapolate from anecdote, but there are lots of stories of shipments just stopping for now.

Morning

Sunday funday.

Saturday Night

Rock on.

Afternoon

enjoy

Leverage

 A 15% market drop is upsetting to normal humans, but catastrophic to people making outsized bets on small swings with borrowed money.

Hedge funds have been hit with the biggest margin calls since Covid shut down huge parts of the global economy in 2020, after Donald Trump’s tariffs triggered a rout in global financial markets.

Wall Street banks have asked their hedge fund clients to stump up more money as security for their loans because the value of their holdings had tumbled, according to three people familiar with the matter. Several big banks have issued the largest margin calls to their clients since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020.

Stay Away

 You can't travel somewhere there is a nontrivial chance you're going to be thrown in detention for weeks because the TSA guy with a quota has decided your "conference visit" isn't covered by a normal tourist visa, or whatever.

Driving the news: The number of foreigners passing through customs at the 10 busiest U.S. airports fell by over 20% year over year toward late March, based on a seven-day rolling average.