Gammichan

One important thing I don't see being discussed much regarding oil price being a recession indicator is the relative impact of the price.
When considering the price of something, you're leaving out half of the equation if you aren't also considering the available buying power.
If the cost of the inputs to a company doubles but that company also has twice as much income, nothing really changed for them.
Companies/people have A LOT more money now. Oil would have to go to like $300-400 to have the same impact as when it went to $150 in 2008.
I don't think $100 oil is straining things as much as p

The 1st order conclusion of this is that it's good for AI providers because it reduces their costs.
The 2nd order conclusion of this is that it enables people to run some quite powerful models on just their 32GB Macbook and they'll no longer need to pay AI providers.
I think we're getting close to the point where local models are good enough for most people and I'm unaware of any kind of moat OpenAI/Anthropic has to prevent them from leaving. At least Google has an ecosystem around it so they can provide unique value that ties into those services.

I've talked before about how a lot of technology is hitting up against the wall of physics, this is evident in war as well and I think it's starting to become a problem for American supremacy.
The SR-71 was developed in the 60s and traveled over mach 3. We still don't really go faster than that.
The F-14 Tomcat from the 70s is still a capable fighter jet, the modern F-22 improved in other electronic dimensions good for support roles but not that much as an actual fighter.
The F-117 had stealth in the 80s, its radar signature was the size of a small bird, essentially nothing. Can't get smaller

I think it's helpful for Americans to frame global conflict death tolls in terms of 9/11s.
Iran: 10x
Gaza: 25x
Sudan: 75x (did you even know about this one?)
Ukraine: 250x
Really makes you appreciate the scale of tragedy out there.

Crazy how society spent a century convincing women they need to focus on work instead of family, made up a bunch of new jobs for them, and now are taking the jobs away with AI.

Marathon haters be like: Ew there's a moth on the loading screen, I can't handle this 😭