Rich

"If I can't have it, no one can."

Glitches And Hitches

In Your Hat, Tang Face

Sometimes, ya just gotta love the French.

"The Orange Plague" by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt,

 is on display at the European Parliament. Majewsky/dpa

'Orange Plague': Naked Trump statue goes on display at EU Parliament

A gilded statue of US President Donald Trump naked went on display in the European Parliament building in Strasbourg on Tuesday.

Danish artist Jens Galschiøt is exhibiting the satirical statue, titled "Orange Plague" and also known as "King of Injustice," at the parliament's headquarters in the eastern French city.

It shows the president sitting naked on the shoulders of a much smaller man. In his hand, he holds a long golf club. Including its pedestal, the statue is around 2.5 metres tall and, according to the artist, is coated with 23-karat gold.

An orange cloth covering it was removed when it was unveiled on Tuesday. The statue stands at one of the parliament's busiest intersections connecting two buildings. It is scheduled to remain on display through Thursday.

The artist was invited by Danish left-wing member of the European Parliament Per Clausen. "If someone is so thin-skinned that they cannot tolerate this sculpture being exhibited in the European Parliament, then they have no place on the world stage," Clausen said.

Business cards placed beside the sculpture quote the "King of Injustice" as saying: "I am sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under the burden. I would do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his back."

Galschiøt describes Trump as one of the greatest obstacles to solving climate change.

A.I.

"Conservatives" love to piss and moan about Social Security and Medicare being Ponzi schemes. And (IMO) the reason they talk that way is because they're trying to inoculate themselves against something. Of course, we don't know what it is yet, but - yeah - you know -every accusation is a confession.

Michael Burry believes the AI bubble ‘may burst’ sooner than he first believed

Key Points

• ‘Big Short’ investor Michael Burry is betting against some key AI names on a new, shorter time horizon.
• New research is leading him to think that ‘the bubble in AI may burst sooner than later.’
• Burry cited a report from Ares Management that found the AI boom is relying on an assumption of ‘sustained AI capital spending.’

Michael Burry is moving up the timeline for his bearish thesis on the fate of the artificial intelligence boom.

The investor, famous for his big short on the U.S. housing market prior to the global financial crisis of 2007 – 2009, is switching to put options from short positions on key AI stocks, giving him more cost-effective leverage over a shorter time horizon, he said.

“Fundamentally, I am moving timelines up,” Burry wrote in his Monday investment newsletter. “As such, I want more leverage in my short positions. Better timelines make leverage more palatable. Nothing says leverage like options, in this case put options, which are relatively cheap due to exceptionally tight volatility measures such as the VIX.”

Some of his moves were intended to reduce his tax liability, he said, but most of it was because he thinks “the bubble in AI may burst sooner than later.” Burry’s new put-heavy positions suggest the AI trade could flip by next summer.

He swapped his Micron short with puts at a June expiration date and a $500 strike price range. He swapped his Nebius  short with puts at the June expiration in the “double digit strike price” range. And he replaced his SOXX iShares Semiconductor ETF short position with September 2027 puts “in the low $400s.”

He also “replaced and rolled the Palantir  short and put position into an enlarged put position” centered at a September 2027 expiration in the low $100s.

Burry cited recent research from Ares Management that emphasized the precarity of relying on unproven revenues in the AI space, structured with demanding legal agreements.

“It would take only a season in which AI revenue disappoints the capital expenditure underwriting it. In that scenario, a handful of boards, predisposed to redeploy capital toward the highest-conviction bet, would simply need to conclude that the highest-conviction bet has shifted. The legal documents contemplate that decision,” the Ares report says.

Burry’s latest moves imply he is growing increasingly bearish on the AI trade. Earlier this month he had increased his shorts on Micron, Nebius and the SOXX.

He cited Acer CEO Jason Chen, who told a Taiwanese media outlet that cyclicality was due to return to the memory chip sector due to increasing Chinese production capacity.

“How could there be a continuous shortage? China’s production capacity has been consistently increasing, and there is absolutely no shortage issue. Contract prices are currently fluctuating at a high level, with some prices going up and others down,” CEO Jason Chen was quoted as saying.

Burry has been bearish for a while this year, but stocks have continued to march to new highs. Burry said in May that equities were “feeling like the last months of the 1999-2000 bubble.” The Nasdaq Composite closed at a record last week.

But many tech shares are still well off their highs. Micron is 16% below its record level, while Palantir is about 10% below its all-time high.

SCOTUS

What's ahead for the Supreme Court as the court begins its new term

For more on the Supreme Court's new term, we called up Amy Howe. She's the cofounder of SCOTUSblog. So, Amy, the climate case that we just heard about, what's the most fascinating part of this case to you?

AMY HOWE: The most fascinating part to me is something that Carrie flagged towards the end of her story, which is the idea that the energy companies' arguments rest on what they call the structure of the Constitution and federal law. But there's nothing in either of those that says that this kind of lawsuit can't go forward. And, you know, this is the kind of case in which we think of the court's conservative majority - although Justice Samuel Alito will be recused from this because he owns stock in energy companies. But a couple of the court's conservative justices, like Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, may be reluctant to rule for the energy companies if they can't point their legal arguments to a specific text in the Constitution or federal law. And as Jonathan Adler said in Carrie's story, Congress could put a stop to this, but it hasn't.

MARTÍNEZ: All right. Now, the last term, Amy - correct me if I'm wrong - it felt very Trump-driven. Tariffs, birthright citizenship. What about this one, at least the start?

HOWE: So far, it's not quite as Trump-driven. I think last term was really an outlier. It was driven in no small part by a lot of the executive orders that he signed almost immediately after taking office on January 20, 2025. And those bubbled up to the Supreme Court pretty quickly, issues like tariffs and birthright citizenship. And they're just - some of those executive orders have worked their way through the system or are continuing to work their way through the system.

I should say that it could change pretty quickly. You know, just in the last couple of weeks, the Supreme Court has added two really major immigration cases. Immigration is obviously a major of the Trump agenda. And policies that came to the Supreme Court on the emergency docket, you know, could be back at the Supreme Court again on the merits. Issues like the ban on transgender members of the military is something that could arrive at the court, and the court could hear oral arguments this term.

MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, I was going to ask you how long do you think that was (laughter) going to last, but you answered it right there. All right, so let's get to some of the other cases. One involves the question of whether state or local governments can ban AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles. What are the arguments there?

HOWE: So this is a really interesting case. You know, the argument in no small part by the gun owners, who live in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois, and want to have AR-15s, say, this is the second most popular gun in the United States, second only to handguns. The state and Cook County and the gun restriction supporters say, yes, but they've also been used in mass shootings.

And the court's Second Amendment jurisprudence is still very new. If we had, like, another two or three minutes, I could basically summarize it. But the court has said that to determine whether restrictions on gun rights like this are constitutional, you have to look at whether there's a history and tradition of similar gun restrictions in early American and English history. And what the court said - the court is really fleshing this test out still. And what the court says in this case is going to have a big impact not just for AR-15s, but for other gun rights restrictions going forward.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, later this year, after the midterms, the justices are expected to hear arguments on a Republican-led effort to revive voter restrictions in Arizona. They're trying to toughen proof of citizenship requirements and also get rid of suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls. What's the central question in this one?

HOWE: Yeah, so there are two central questions in this one. The first is whether or not Arizona can require proof of citizenship to register using the voter registration form that Arizona uses. And this is a question that came to the Supreme Court on the emergency docket already. And the Supreme Court allowed Arizona to continue using this kind of form while the litigation continues. So that is a sign that, you know, there are at least five justices who are predisposed to allow Arizona to use it.

And then the second is whether or not Arizona, a policy that would remove noncitizens from the voter rolls violates a federal voting law that creates what's called a quiet period - that in 90 days before an election, a federal election, states can't do mass purges of voters, the idea that there's just not enough time for people to figure out that they've been taken off the list and then register again. And the - Arizona's argument is that these people shouldn't be voters in the first place because they're not eligible to vote. And so that is, you know, these are both case - these are both issues that aren't going to affect, obviously, the midterm elections, but could have a big impact not only in Arizona, but in other states in the 2028 elections.

MARTÍNEZ: One more thing really quick, Amy. President Trump told Time Magazine he regretted nominating justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett because they vote against him too often. I don't think I should have to ask this question, but here it goes. Do comments like that have any impact on the justices?

HOWE: I'm not sure that they have much of an impact on the justices themselves. I think they would at least tell us that they decide the cases based on how they think the law dictates they should come out. But, you know, they're certainly not helpful in this climate of overheated rhetoric about the Supreme Court and federal judges in particular.

MARTÍNEZ: Amy Howe is the cofounder of SCOTUSblog. Amy, thanks.

HOWE: Thank you.

About That POTUS

I can't confirm any of this, but does it sound implausible?

What are the chances it explains a lot?

-vs-

What are the chances it's just pretty silly?

I think I have to shade a little toward the former.

Who Needs The EPA?

Silly regulations cut into the earnings of my stock portfolio by cutting into the profits of the companies in my stock portfolio.

So what if a few farmers croak? Their land and their operations will be absorbed by Cargill or Tyson or some other huge conglomerate, and that'll make them more profitable, and that'll make more money for me.

So fuck 'em - I got mine. I can say that because it's the national motto now, right?

Aaron Parnas

Trump, as always, is telling us who he is.

I think he knows his chances of getting a full blown dictatorship off the ground are getting very narrow. And while he may believe he's not really inviting someone to blow up San Diego, in his authoritarian brain, he needs to punish people for not going along with him. So why not California? They've been bucking him the whole time. They're big and successful and blue, and since he loves a good sweeping generalization, they all hate him, even the Republican voters there - but since they haven't risen up and helped him enough, it can only mean they're disloyal, so they should be punished too. The whole state is a kind of personification of people not going along with him. They should all be punished.

That's all he's got. It's all he's ever had. Force is the only tool in his kit. He wields it in a few different ways, but it always comes back to him trying to force you to do something he wants done. Of course, he's creepy and cowardly about it - always looking to get someone else to do the dirty work - so it's another in an unbroken string of Stochastic Terrorism.

"Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?"

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