Friday Kind of Day

Software Hell Again — Thanks, Microsoft (NOT!!!)

There was an overnight update to MS Edge which managed to roach half the useful stuff on my computer — hid links, moved tools around, and somehow scrambled display settings that had been working perfectly well yesterday.

Like we don’t have real stuff to do?

When will software companies learn that, for high-output people, installing anything that comes anywhere near appearance or workflow ought to require explicit approval?

Something along the lines of:

“If you do this, it may break X, Y and Z. Continue?”

Seems simple enough.

And then requiring you to log in — or otherwise threatening the disappearance of saved tabs, favorites, settings and God knows what else — is exactly the sort of thing that, at age 77, makes a fellow unusually receptive to the phrase:

Don’t move my cheese.

Dear God, Complexity is the Devil. What we’re building on the rubble of Babel is miles past anything some horned feller could conjure.

And it isn’t just Edge, it’s software updates. I use a content management shell for writing, and it is in a brushfire war between “plugins” most of the time, seems like.  And when everything settles down for more than a week, the core program changes and the battle goes hot all over again.

All of them.

OK…bile and spew aside, let’s get bombed, right?

News Compressor: ON

What has changed is that the Saudi oil-bypass problem appears worse than previously reported.

We don’t believe this would be the first time anyone shaded the truth about a bypass operation, however.

Reuters satellite analysis and industry sources now put damage at three East-West Pipeline pumping stations, rather than two. The line had reportedly been carrying 4–5 million barrels per day — roughly 4%–5% of world supply — and several sources say full repairs could take five to six weeks, although partial operation may resume sooner.

Now the old newsman’s gut starts to churn.

Because futures pricing is still trying to tread water.

Maybe through the close.

After that? Anything goes.

Midterms are coming, political tempers are already up, the Middle seems to have gone missing, and diesel is flirting with territory that makes almost everybody unhappy.

Doesn’t exactly feel comforting, if you know what I’m saying.

Next: Russia launched another large missile/drone barrage across Ukraine while Poland scrambled NATO aircraft.

Ukraine reported nearly 160 drones, along with ballistic, cruise and Oniks missiles; more than 20 people were wounded, energy infrastructure was hit, and a ship captain was killed. Poland reported no violation of its airspace.

Vector: Escalating.

A note for hyper-critical readers: these numbers will change.

Don’t whine.

This is what’s on the wires around 5 AM, and that’s where our daily tee shot gets taken.

3. Yemen’s widening war has produced another major displacement wave.

The UN migration agency says at least 112,000 people have been internally displaced in two weeks, while nearly 3,000 have fled by sea to Djibouti, as Houthis advance toward Bab el-Mandeb and exchange attacks with Saudi and Yemeni forces.

We’ll tag this as a fairly large canary.

Because we have been waiting for water systems, food systems and sectarian pressure to begin producing the next major diaspora wave.

This may be the front edge.

4. The U.S. Mid-Atlantic grid has moved into emergency-prevention mode.

DOE issued a September 17–18 emergency order allowing PJM to dispatch specified and backup generation because hot weather and planned transmission outages threaten stressed grid conditions.

Pardon me, but WTF are planned transmission outages still doing on the books during stressed conditions?

I’d shake my head, but there’s enough rattling between the ears already.

Inside Pages

You remember the old saying from rotary-press newspapering days, right?

Inside news is there to space out the ads.

1. Diesel keeps getting uglier.

U.S. on-highway diesel reached $6.285 per gallon September 14, up 31.8 cents in a week and $2.546 above a year ago. California hit $8.039.

Escalating.

And yes, for the number auditors: AAA shows a somewhat different figure. We’re not turning this into the Great National Diesel Price Audit. You folks can argue over the pennies while we sit here with a beer.

Besides, we’re having too much fun with tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report on how nudity can relieve the energy crisis.

We’ll save the keener insights for the grown-ups tomorrow.

2. Exxon’s 275,000-barrel-per-day Joliet refinery remains offline after a power failure followed by a floodwater-pump problem. The Midwest plant normally produces roughly 11 million gallons of gasoline and diesel daily.

Worse than expected.  “And the hits just keep on coming…”

3. The average U.S. 30-year fixed mortgage jumped 19 basis points to 6.95%, its highest level since January 2025.

Four percent, do I hear four?

No?

Didn’t think so.

4. The Bank of Japan raised its policy rate to 1.25%, a 31-year high, but the yen weakened sharply because the 7–2 decision and accompanying guidance were less hawkish than markets expected.

Another reminder that markets don’t trade the number. Nikkei was up 882 points overnight.  I had a yen for knowing.

They trade the difference between the number and what everybody had already guessed.

5. The House’s Russia package passed 262–159 and now awaits Trump’s signature. It sanctions Russian banks, officials and shadow-fleet tankers and authorizes tariffs of up to 100% against major buyers of Russian energy.

Newly scheduled.

6. India is already warning that the Russian-oil tariff provisions could damage U.S.-India relations and says it will protect its own energy security.

Escalating.

Meaning the sanctions chessboard just acquired another row of pieces.

7. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk says intelligence indicates Russia may attempt ostensibly “accidental” drone or missile strikes on NATO countries supporting Ukraine.

That remains a Polish intelligence assessment, not independently verified Russian intent.

Hard telling in wars lately.

But aren’t the PR budgets going up on all sides?

8. Taiwan says 28 PLA aircraft and nine Chinese vessels operated around the island in the latest 24-hour reporting period, with 24 aircraft crossing the median line.

Watch for the occasional AI-stock jitter whenever Taiwan tension rises. Chips still matter.

9. A China Coast Guard ship collided with a Philippine government fisheries vessel about 54 nautical miles off Palawan.

Manila calls it deliberate ramming. No Chinese account was available in the material accessed this morning.

Note to reader/sailor Stiks down in Oz waters:

Stay south – people up north of you are dangerous and unpredickable. (sic).

10. Taiwan has conducted its first joint combat exercise integrating multiple attack-drone types, alongside Hsiung Feng III missiles and HIMARS.

Gee, you don’t suppose China’s interest in having a look-see is entirely unrelated, do you?

11. A Federal Register search function was found using Alibaba’s Qwen AI and was removed Wednesday.

Reuters reported no demonstrated immediate security compromise, while the question of whether government data left U.S. infrastructure remained unresolved.

Of course, what caught my eye wasn’t merely the security angle.

AI has an inconvenient habit of crossing borders, comparing stories, finding contradictions and occasionally engaging in worldwide truth-bombing.

Bureaucracies everywhere may eventually find that…awkward.  Regulate and litigate is easier than abdicate in that world.

12. Crisco disclosed CVE-2026-76460, a CVSS 10.0 unauthenticated authentication-bypass flaw affecting ISE and ISE-PIC.  (Yes, the crisco was intentional…to a five-minute fight with a smellchecker to keep it.)

Cisco says there is no workaround and patched releases are available. If you are running, oh, say an instrument landing system on a platform this might not be too reassuring.  But, of course, who does?

Hope they work better than the Edge update that ate my morning.  Alas! Steam engines blew up and killed people – no reason “modern” tech should fare differently…

13. A separate critical Check Point Management/Log Server vulnerability can permit unauthenticated remote code execution as root.

New.

Apparently the cyber guys weren’t planning a quiet weekend either.

14. FAA granted Boeing an emissions-rule waiver permitting 35 additional 777F freighters after 2028, avoiding what Boeing says could have been more than $15 billion in lost U.S. exports.

There is an interesting policy tell buried in there. When environmental targets collide directly with very large export numbers and industrial employment, governments sometimes rediscover the meaning of trade-off.

Funny how that works.

15. Three people — two adults and a child — were killed when floodwater swept them away on the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico.

Also in the “Noah” department, the body of the final missing Grand Canyon flood victim has been identified, bringing the August 29 flash-flood toll to three.

Another flood Wednesday caused additional damage but no reported injuries.  And still, not a fricking drop here.   Every time I start to cheer up, I look at the long-range forecast.  And the word “Fuck!” magically appears.

16. The DRC Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak reached 7,258 confirmed cases and 3,510 deaths in data through September 13, with 58 new confirmed cases and 35 deaths in the latest ECDC comparison.

Every time we go into a medical facility now, we seem to get some version of:

“Have you traveled to the Congo region in the past three months?”

Mr. Wise-ass himself shoots back “No. You been to the Moon?”

17. Trouble for somebody besides our Big Island readers for a change?

NHC cut AL98’s Atlantic development chances from 40% Thursday morning to 10% early Friday.

For once, a vector moving in the right direction. But you won’t know it from conventional media.  More than a limp-piss shower and it’s like the Second Coming publicity department for east coast-centric media.  Hawaii gets it ass kicked several times and a volcano spews and it’s tra-lal-lah…over there somewhere.

News Outlook

Let’s not. It’s Friday.

Still, two things are worth keeping in the corner of the screen.

New Signals Rising

Energy disruption is migrating downstream. Odds: 75%.

Hardly surprising. Once crude transport, pipelines and refineries begin stacking problems on top of one another, the story stops being just “oil.”

It becomes diesel, freight, food, manufacturing, inflation and eventually rates.  OK, toss in civilization-level collapse then, if you insist.

The global central-bank vector has turned distinctly tighter. Odds: 80%.

That’s gasoline on the slowdown ahead. And diesel if you just nailed a HELOC before rates jam.

My friend The Economic Fractalist has come to broadly similar conclusions about where we may be in the market sequence we’ve been comparing with the late-1920s period:

The Economic Fractalist | Non-Stochastic Saturation Macroeconomics

History doesn’t repeat cleanly.

But every now and then it develops a familiar accent.

Around the Ranch: Not Shy, Just Retiring

A lot of it going around, apparently:

Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Chairman, Replaced by Son Howard – Bloomberg

I don’t know whether I’m in good company…or he is…

Which gets me to today’s reader-board meeting.

I need a quick vote.

As you know, I’m enjoying the greater focus on the Peoplenomics.com side of the house. The longer-form work is more fun, there’s room to actually develop ideas, and frankly it feels like a more worthwhile use of the remaining keyboard mileage than seeing how much “free” time I can pour into the public side.

So:

Should I completely drop the retirement-day Urban columns, or keep the short BlinkLabNews/News Compressor summaries running on those days?

Post your vote in the comments.

Because apparently even retirement requires market research.

Who knew?

Off to see if I can see what’s behind curtain #2.

That could be the Fed Industrial Production and Cap utilization shortly.  Yeah…not my idea of a wet-spot but if it turns your crank…

Note to Andy: yes, I will make that change – will take a few days…enjoy.

Write when…oh, right now is fine,

George@Ure.net