Sunday Thoughts

It’s hard not to look away sometimes. There’s just so much incompetence and corruption, not to mention policy failures.

• Crypto investors face historic losses: Recently, a staggering $19 billion in crypto liquidations hit the market. It’s worth exploring what led to this crash and how it might affect both long-term and short-term investors.

• A new gold rush: Geopolitical factors are driving a rise in gold demand, particularly from China. The country aims to stockpile gold to lessen its reliance on the US dollar, seek influence over the global monetary system, and shield itself from potential punitive actions from the US.

• Warnings from a small town’s pension fund: Those thinking that liquidating private funds is simple should maybe consult the individual who once oversaw a whopping $750 billion.

• Nonprofits become a tool for the AI industry: The web archive Common Crawl has been quietly diverting paywalled articles to AI companies while misleading publishers about it.

• Globalization of the Second Amendment through 3D printed guns: The FGC-9, designed by a German incel, surprisingly embodies an American ethos.

• Role of anti-vaccine Facebook groups in current issues: A study revealed that Russian trolls and advanced bots promote vaccination content much more frequently than typical users. Their outputs often equally highlight both pro- and anti-vaccine perspectives, which seems to align with a goal of stirring discord on contentious topics.

• A closer look at ICE: I found myself one early morning wandering into a dark parking lot to meet people trying to address the failings of the courts, politicians, and police concerning immigration enforcement.

• Impact of USAID shutdown: The short documentary “Lovina’s Choice” sheds light on the consequences of halted aid. Historian Richard Rhodes refers to this phenomenon as “public man-made death,” an often-overlooked cause of mortality that has reportedly taken the lives of around 600,000 people—most of whom are children.

• Trump’s case raises serious concerns: The limited documents found by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago were so sensitive that they couldn’t be shown to even high-ranking Justice Department officials.

• Political tensions fueled by extreme chatbots: Once just seen as neutral tools for responses, AI chatbots now mirror the biases of those who created them.

This weekend, check out the interview with Brandon Zick, CIO of Ceres Partners, who is at the helm of their investment strategies.

In 2025, it’s not just the low-income folks struggling; middle-class Americans are feeling the squeeze too.