Ben Curry
banner
benjamincurry.bsky.social
Ben Curry
@benjamincurry.bsky.social
Knower of things, good worder

Present obsessions: 🇺🇦, aphorisms, the Fed, street photography, well-balanced portfolios, Bluesky discourse, język polski, soup dumplings
I call my fists Vladimir and Estragon, because they don't get the article done tonight but surely tomorrow.
*Holding up my fist* say hello to Agatha Christie *and then my other fist* and this here is her collection of genre defining mystery novels
December 1, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Why ruin a wonderful Thanksgiving tradition @donmoyn.bsky.social?
I am asking you, once again, to stop giving Mike Dukakis your Turkey carcasses
November 27, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Google stated that it doesn’t use text from Gmail messages to train its Gemini AI after social media posts claiming the opposite went viral last week.

Google’s policy might hold true today, but it’s hard to imagine it won’t change soon.
Google Says Gmail Doesn't Use Your Emails to Train Its AI, After All
Viral claims over the weekend said that Google uses Gmail messages to train its AI, but the site that broke the news has since retracted it.
www.vice.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Peak enshitification
Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea
November 25, 2025 at 1:27 PM
"The things that we love tell us what we are."
— St. Thomas Aquinas
November 25, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Bitcoin whale Owen Gunden appears to have sold his entire BTC position for a total of $1.3 billion.

Gunden first bought Bitcoin in 2011, and recently sent coins to centralized exchange Kraken.

Arkham Intelligence claims these transfers suggest that Gunden has liquidated his stash of 11,000 BTC.
Bitcoin Billionaire Dumps Entire $1.3 Billion BTC Stash After 14 Years: Arkham
A Bitcoin whale appears to have sold his entire crypto stash for $1.3 billion—14 years after first buying BTC, says Arkham Intelligence.
finance.yahoo.com
November 22, 2025 at 6:12 AM
November 21, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Ben Curry
"We have a 2000s housing bubble level of financial engineering on top of a 1920s level of private unregulated lending on top of something bigger than a 1990s internet (or 1870s railroad) level of technology and infrastructure build-out." prospect.org/2025/11/19/a...
The AI Bubble Is Bigger Than You Think - The American Prospect
It’s not just OpenAI that looks overhyped. There’s a whole mountain of sketchy financial engineering underneath.
prospect.org
November 19, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Another fed funds rate cut is off the table for December
BLS confirms they will not publish the October household survey data. Establishment survey to be published December 16.

www.bls.gov/bls/2025-lap...
November 19, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Bookmark it now, this won’t age well for Donnie
TRUMP: STOCK MARKET GROWTH IS LIFTING THE U.S. ECONOMY.
November 19, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Ben Curry
The Tesla board received a promise from Elon Musk that he would wind down his political involvement, as outlined in a proxy statement filed with the SEC. This assurance was sought by the board to ensure Musk remained focused on leading Tesla and delivering on company goals

aka
you got Musked
November 19, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Michael Every's lesson on mercantilism & China:

China *is* a neo-mercantilist, which means it uses big trade surpluses as a source of power. Target: make things.

China *is not* a mercantilist, an economic strategy that aims to accumulate gold via trade surpluses as a source of power. Target: gold.
November 19, 2025 at 5:28 PM
More AI crash news arriving every day. Today: Filings show Peter Thiel’s hedge fund Thiel Macro LLC sold its entire stake in Nvidia during the third quarter.
Peter Thiel’s Fund Sold Off Entire Nvidia Stake Last Quarter
The Thiel Macro fund now counts Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and a reduced stake in Tesla Inc. as its main bets, according to a 13F filing. Thiel’s move comes at a time of rising concerns about an AI ...
finance.yahoo.com
November 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Tariffs are going great!
RIO TINTO SLAPS NEW SURCHARGES ON U.S. ALUMINUM BUYERS AS TARIFFS DRAIN INVENTORIES AND SEND PRICES TO RECORD HIGHS. U.S. ALUMINUM MARKET IS “ALL BUT BROKEN,” WITH STOCKPILES VANISHING AND PREMIUMS SOARING ABOVE TRUMP’S 50% IMPORT DUTY.
November 17, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Source of this report is Rzeczpospolita

www.rp.pl/wojsko/art43...
November 17, 2025 at 5:06 PM
This seems bad. Rzeczpospolita is a respected paper of record in Warsaw, and wouldn’t publish things like this lightly.
"An armed attack on Poland is being prepared. The enemy has begun preparations for war." - said the Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, General Wiesław Kukuła, as reported by Rzeczpospolita.
www.rp.pl/wojsko/art43...
November 17, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by Ben Curry
The official @bsky.app account is back doing carpet bombing on Threads

www.threads.com/@bluesky_soc...
November 14, 2025 at 7:23 PM
We could start by emphasizing that deflation is much, much worse than inflation
I think it's time for a real and mature conversation about what prices are, and what they tend to do. The reality is that inflation tends to be positive, and so prices tend to rise. The President's original sin was that he promised he would reverse this process. He hasn't and he shouldn't.
November 14, 2025 at 6:50 PM
SPX said that's it for bitcoin today
bitcoin said that’s it for stocks today
November 14, 2025 at 6:47 PM
North American freight volumes continue to collapse: The benchmark Cass Shipment Index is sending a warning about the state of the U.S. economy. The index has dropped to October 2009 levels—the depths of the Great Financial Crisis.

www.cassinfo.com/freight-audi...
November 14, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Wither on the Vine….
Vine reboot called diVine has been launched 📱

• Funded by Jack Dorsey
• Includes over 100K videos from Vine's archive
• Users can upload 6-second videos
• AI-generated content is not allowed
November 13, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Reposted by Ben Curry
nobody does more brutal fashion reviews than the irish
November 22, 2024 at 1:57 PM
Texas judges who decline to perform a wedding ceremony based on a “sincerely held religious belief” do not violate the state’s rules on judicial impartiality, according to a comment the Texas Supreme Court added to the state’s judicial conduct code last week.
Texas judges won’t face sanctions for declining gay weddings
Officiating weddings isn’t a requirement for judges or justices of the peace. A new rule will let them perform only opposite-sex marriage ceremonies.
www.texastribune.org
November 10, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Ben Curry
November 10, 2025 at 3:14 AM
Reposted by Ben Curry
so currently defectors are:

Kaine (2030)
Shaheen (Retiring)
Hasan (2028)
Fetterman (2028)
Durbin (Retiring)
CCM (2028)
Rosen (2030)
King (2030)
November 10, 2025 at 1:52 AM