You do understand that products are "essentially fungible" and crude is semi-fungibl (most crude is pretty fungible), and the US is not an island in this marketplace?

Also, you do realize that Aframax rents from Venezuela are ~$1,5m in early 2026 to ~$3,5M? Even your "cheap case" is increasing crude prices by 5%. But to repeat: the US is not an island in this global marketplace. Products get exported from US refineries and sell at globally competitive prices, which forces US consumers to pay globally-competitive prices as well.

I asked chatGPT. It basically recommended all of the things they've already done: using strategic reserves, easing import restrictions and reducing refinery bottlenecks. Then I asked if it was aware that the US is at war with Iran. So it searched the web, presumably read some recent news and recommended reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

So maybe they did ask chatGPT.

it isn't faced by nomadic hunter-gatherers

Hunter-gatherers are generally nomadic because of the tragedy of the commons. They show up, hunt and gather out the area they're in with no motivation to manage it sustainably, then move elsewhere to do the same thing again. Nomads don't "face" tragedy of the commons, they pack up and leave. It becomes a problem that needs to be solved for civilizations because they give up that option.

It didn't. Hash trees are nearly 50 years old. Bitcoin's novelty was proposing a 1) a practical proof of work system based on computing hashes 2) a distributed transaction system based on it where the users would perform the processing.

The proof of work system has proven to be enormously expensive and Bitcoin processing was quickly taken over by large organizations so it failed to achieve (2) as well.

The SEC thing the story is about has nothing to do with Bitcoin. It uses "smart contracts" which is an Etherium thing. Etherium notably started with a different proof of work algorithm to try and fix the problems with Bitcoin's, then dropped proof of work entirely.

Have you checked out tanker rates lately? You absolutely save money by having more domestic supply in this environment.

(Crude isn't exactly "cheap" either)

I just tried this for fun with Gemini (hardly the best model, but I wasn't about to spend the money having an agentic framework of high-end models go over it ;) ). It advised:

1) Working with the Iranians at the upcoming UN meeting to try to strike a deal where the US stops its blockage of Iranian oil in exchange for Iran allowing free traffic through Hormuz, without nuclear programme preconditions.

2) Adding pressure on Putin to accept the Ukrainian offer of a mutual energy industry targeting ceasefire

3) Focus freed up US naval forces on protecting convoys through the Bab-el-Mandeb

4) Launching an emergency Jones Act waiver

5) Order the EPA Administrator to issue temporary waivers easing seasonal Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP) gasoline restrictions and granting flexibility on Tier 3 sulfur credit banking.

6) Convene the CEOs of the top domestic refiners into a taskforce run by the Department of Energy to coordinate autumn maintenance schedules to avoid multiple regional coker and hydrocracker units taking turnaround downtime simultaneously.

7) Formally announce that the administration will not conduct large-scale, unrefined crude releases from the SPR. Signal to the industry that physical crude in domestic storage is adequate, shifting regulatory focus to downstream bottlenecks.

8) Reprogram allocated DOE infrastructure funds ($1.4 billion) to expedite cavern repairs at Bryan Mound and Bayou Choctaw.

9) Deploy the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve (NEHHOR) strictly on an exchange/loan basis (where refiners borrow diesel barrels now and repay them with interest in refined barrels next spring) to protect national balance sheets while easing spot tightness

10) Issue an Executive Order under the Defense Production Act (DPA) to expedite pipeline compressor stations and pipeline permits connecting the Permian Basin to Gulf Coast refining hubs

11) Direct the Surface Transportation Board to prioritize crude and chemical feedstock movements on Class I railroads.

12) Use USDA Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) authorities to establish emergency fuel cost-offset credits for agricultural producers and commercial freight carriers until crack spreads retreat below $30/barrel.

13) Announce this unified security-and-energy plan publicly to provide appropriate signals to the market.

The US economy as a whole would lose more from banning exports than it would gain. If one is concerned about "ordinary people", it makes more sense to continue allowing exports, add a windfall tax on oil companies or add export duties, and then rebate the revenue from that across the US population, than to ban exports.

Had the oil industry not been so naive and spent this whole year betting on TACO and/or Iranian surrender, the US could be making even more money right now on this crisis. New shale production from an existing lease can be added in just 3-6 months, yet shale expansion rates didn't increase over baseline from spring through the summer. Refining capacity is harder to add that quickly, but probably could have been boosted several percent, which would still be a quite meaningful added value. It gets harder to improve capacity now because most types of capacity addition involve downtime and absolutely nobody wants to be shut down now while crack spreads are this high.

I'd love to see the US congress pass a bill renaming Trump ;)

They're not losing interest, they're being TOLD not to go into coding because AI coding is taking off.

Voting doesn't matter - it never did

Bullshit. By repeating this you're among the worst offenders. You're encouraging other people not to participate in their democracy. You guys have steeped yourselves in propaganda for your entire history and an active corruption and anti-education campaign for at least the last fifty years but you're not that far gone. Yet.

Plus my votes potentially won't count in the next election.

Yeah, voter suppression is bad hey? Stop doing it. Encourage people to think about their vote, cast it, and protect it, because it does matter.

hey will deliberately put their military forces in or near schools and hospitals.

Like these ones? The US department of defence operates more than a hundred schools, many of them on military bases. They pretty much all have hospitals too.

Are you American and eligible to vote? If so, then you are. That's what the very first line of your constitution, "We the people" means. It's a declaration of popular sovereignty, the idea that political power originates with the citizens.

If you voted for the president or representatives who placed Hegseth in power then you're extra responsible. Ditto if you didn't try to recall for those representatives or if you don't vote in the next election for the candidate most likely to ship off anyone involved to be tried for war crimes.

I remember looking it up at the time and I'm pretty sure Google Maps had it listed as an elementary school. It certainly is now:

https://www.google.com/maps/pl...

basic incompetence and a complete disregard for human life.

The first bit of this sentence is absolutely wrong.

I don't know, that sentence seems to describe Hegseth pretty well, along with the people who put him in his current job. Unless you're arguing that his incompetence is more advanced than "basic."

"Meta didn't tell Amazon that Muse would access its store" - and? I didn't tell Amazon I'd be accessing its store either before I started shopping there.

This isn't models going off and browsing Amazon for giggles; they're going there because their user told them to. The user would have otherwise told their web browser to; it just would have taken far more steps.