Today’s “Urban Nav Check” will be nose down, all the way. At least, until it isn’t.
Markets Likely to Discount Data
Warring Belief Waves have their own set of rules One of which is that when a Big Belief is under attack, all news may be ignored. But, only for a while. Today’s poster child data point?
“The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index fell 0.6 points in May to 95.3, remaining below its 52-year average of 98.0. The Uncertainty Index rose 3 points from April to 91, remaining well above its historical average of 68.
As reported in NFIB’s monthly Jobs Report, the NFIB Small Business Employment Index remained essentially flat, registering 100.3 in May. The current reading is below the 2025 average of 101.2 but still slightly above the historical average of 100.0. In May, a seasonally adjusted 29% of small business owners reported job openings they could not fill in May, down 5 points from April and marking the lowest level since May 2020.”
We take this outlook seriously. It doesn’t mean the market will go there in the next 3-seconds, but economic quicksand can take a minute.
Narrative Wars Count, Too
While we’re very cautious, still – especially after last Friday and the most recent grocery restocking – the market may be able to ignore these international trade figures just out, too:
Will these numbers have any measurable impact on how you conduct your life today? Probably not. Think of them like wind gusts (cat’s paws) on a lake of future.
The real question isn’t so much if we could move a little higher today. It’s can we hold onto it to the close and whatever CPI hits us with tomorrow?
The Blink Lab
Over the past few days, not a lot of big news vector changes. But, that doesn’t slow the old News Industry from screaming for your attention. Seriously, though, what really matters?
Small Business Sandbagging. Confidence continues to soften while uncertainty refuses to fade. Blink: Main Street appears to be quietly shifting from expansion to preservation. Was the short-term top last week, then?
Markets Continue DCB from Friday. (Dead cat bounce) Equities continue to trade on AI enthusiasm despite increasingly mixed economic signals. Blink: Belief is still outrunning fundamentals.
Inflation (CPI tomorrow) Lurks as possible Belief Wave Buster. Wednesday’s CPI inflation report has become more important for narrative than for arithmetic. Blink: Markets could be buying the rumor preparing to interpret rather than simply observe.
Energy – Holding for now. Oil has eased from recent highs, but geopolitical risk remains embedded beneath prices. Blink: The fuse may be longer, but it is still burning. Trust no one and carry flash goggles.
Shipping Cools. Global maritime security concerns continue to simmer across multiple regions. Energy prices, food concerns still on a low simmer. Blink: Supply chains remain only one headline away from renewed disruption.
China wants more Tech. Technology demand continues to support exports even while broader trade tensions persist. Blink: AI is becoming a new engine of global commerce. Web consensus is risk for Taiwan will be higher/highest over fall.
Taiwan preemptively preps. Military exercises continue to look increasingly operational instead of symbolic. Blink: Preparation appears to be advancing faster than diplomacy.
Artificial Intelligence spread not much changed – for the week. The competitive race is shifting from possessing AI to deploying it intelligently. Son G2’s server site build is onboarding 25-50 tradesmen a day now. Huge ops are common. Blink: Excellence with Judgment is becoming the scarce resource.
Technology Regulation. Different regulatory regimes are beginning to create different AI realities. Blink: Geography may soon matter as much as software. And again we direct you to our Home AI Central website because sovereign AI is a possible hedge against the “machine state” with government guard railing around thought.
Food prices bite. Grocery pressures may ebb and flow, but structural stresses remain in the food system. Food will depend on weather, fertilizer, and energy costs. Blink: Temporary relief should not be mistaken for long-term stability. As a long-term traction of net income, this one’s just starting take-off roll.
Weather blows. Seasonal extremes continue accumulating into measurable economic costs. Blink: Climate is increasingly behaving like an operating expense. But in the short term a bit of improvement with “only” 48.7 percent of the country in drought conditions.
The Pocket Sewing Machine Mental Model
I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember them, but back in the 1950s and 1960s there was a whole fad period in America of knitting and sewing machines. Part of the earliest direct-response ad programs (“Call now, operators are standing by…”)
One was the Kenner Knit-O-Matic. It was marketed as an “automatic knitting machine” that let you crank out scarves, hats, and tubular knitted pieces with yarn.
America’s penchant to stitch (and knit) things together has been a long-term amusement that got started with early “pocket sewing machines.”
The old original was the Moldacot Pocket Sewing Machine, invented in the 1880s and sold as a compact lockstitch machine. It’s quite the antique/collector answer.
The TV/As-Seen-on-TV memory is more likely Handy Stitch or Magic Stitch — the little handheld battery sewing gadget sold as a quick mender for hems, curtains, pockets, and repairs. Singer’s Handy Stitch commercials were especially visible later, around the early 1990s.
“Ure point (if there is one)?”
HLMs – human learning machines – we carbons who pre-date the silicons – have a machine learning system built in and – partly – loaded by our parents. Our “loading process” is a lot like quilting and I know people who actually did that with a pocket stitcher.
One key difference between how LLMs learn versus HLMs like us is how we treat our “edgings.” LLMs tend to stop at the end of whole books fed in as part of their training. Humans often have softer edges., And that’s why the “quilting with a pocket stitcher” is such a useful notion to keep in mind when reading news.
“What am I trying to weave here, and why?”
The only real value of “news patches” is when you can stitch them into something really useful. Like a personal future response plan…
At the Ranch: AI for Nuke Response Plans
Before we begin, a couple of notes. First is that paid AI is a whole other thing than free AI. Second is that we are not endorsing anything, except showing you a method whereby you can use AI to scale your risks and make life plans for whatever is out there in the local reality’s future.
Here are some basic prepping questions I put to AI:
What are the odds a nuclear device will be used over the balance of the year?
AI answer: Low, but not laughably low. The odds are still far below “probable,” but higher than the comfortable old Cold War background hum. The Middle East vector, Ukraine-Russia, nuclear rhetoric, tactical-use discussions, and non-state actor risk all move the needle from “academic” to “worth planning for.” Not because it is likely, but because the downside is civilization-scale.
Summarize and segment public response.
AI answer: Public response will likely divide into five groups: the dismissers, the doom-scrollers, the panic buyers, the already-prepared, and the quietly practical. The most useful group is the last one: people who don’t waste time arguing probability and instead quietly improve water, food, medicine, power, comms, shelter, and measurement.
We are located 120 miles southeast of Dallas. What is our current risk relative to other regions?
AI answer: Direct blast risk is much lower than Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, ports, military bases, command centers, refineries, and dense infrastructure nodes. But fallout risk is not purely distance-based. Fallout is wind, rain, altitude, target, device size, and timing. Your ranch location lowers one category of risk while leaving weather-carried contamination, supply-chain breakdown, grid interruption, and panic migration on the board.
What are the core preps to have on hand?
AI answer: The boring list wins. Water, shelf-stable food, meds, first aid, batteries, radios, lighting, sanitation, plastic sheeting, tape, filters, gloves, N95s or better, tarps, fuel discipline, cash, pet supplies, and a shelter-in-place room. Add a written household plan because memory gets stupid when sirens, phones, and adrenaline all go off at once.
Should every home have a Geiger counter?
AI answer: Every home? Maybe not. Every serious preparedness home? Yes. A radiation meter is not magic and it does not replace official guidance, but it turns invisible risk into measured risk. Measurement beats guessing, and guessing is what gets people into trouble when the threat is invisible.
How valuable is indoor food production likely to be?
AI answer: More valuable than most people think, but not because lettuce is a nuclear-war solution. Indoor food production is a systems trainer. It teaches water, lighting, nutrients, redundancy, daily discipline, pest control, and morale. In any prolonged disruption, a grow room is not merely calories; it is vitamins, routine, resilience, and psychological proof that the household is still producing.
Leaving aside nuke use, what are our real highest risks?
AI answer: For our part of East Texas, the more likely risk stack is severe weather, grid outage, heat, wildfire or brush fire, medical interruption, fuel disruption, supply-chain problems, communications failure, and then earthquake well down the list. Quakes are possible, but they are not the lead planning case. Around here, the first planning question is simpler: what happens when the road is blocked, the grid is down, the freezer is full, the phones are flaky, the medicine cabinet is thin, and the weather is trying to kill productivity?
Bottom line?
AI is not an oracle. It is a structured second brain. Used correctly, it helps turn fear into checklists, headlines into local risk maps, and vague dread into decisions. That is the right use of the tool: not “tell me the future,” but “help me plan intelligently for a range of futures.”
Tomorrow, more of our operating manual for intelligent adults navigating the collapse of information overload into actionable decisions over on the Peoplenomics side of the house. Except that one comes with 20-odd market charts and way longer content.
Write when you get rich,
George@Ure.net
Here is WHy I don’t like AI and NEVER will. YUP I get it, but I also have a higher IQ than most. LOL
Quote below
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for a “global pause in AI development” to address safety concerns regarding the rapid advancement of AI systems. He expressed a concern that these systems may soon be capable of self-improvement without human oversight. He calls it “beyond human AI.”
Anthropic owns the AI chatbot system known as Claude.
The fear is that AIs will soon be able learn to rewrite their own code. They would be able to generate new knowledge, as opposed to just mimicking human knowledge, and act on their own. In short, they will no longer be under human control.
It’s one thing to rewrite your own code. That can be monitored. It’s something else to be able to rewrite your code and get it executed. That may well require subterfuge. AI is fully capable of that, but we’re capable of being careful. I can see AI rewriting code and implementing it through an exploit of a zero day that it discovers. That would be worth applauding if it wasn’t so dangerous and from our perspective, amoral.
Someone will likely open Pandora’s box even further. We live in interesting times.
Don in Montana;
I have been using Claude for about a month; I’m using it to better understand how the brain works and how to better manage the different operating systems in the brain. The big fear that governments have with AI is it can quickly and easily reveal the systemic corruption on both sides of politics. AI will replace humans that fail
to create coherence within themselves. There is a saying in construction : “one machine can easily replace 100 men, but 100 machines will never replace one good man”
Don
I gotta pass that one up to g2 (son on msft server farm build) – and as I posited on my ai theory site the reason govt wants control of ai is t o control the narrative. Sovereign ai is defense… thanks
well done G . yep worth the price of admission to this show . my mate of nearly 30 years is hittin them out of the park . tip my hat to yah
I got a tip for ya daguino…
Sell, sell,sell the TBT, and Sell,sel,sell the TLT.
2 easy shorts that are making me some dough.
..”Chicken in the bread pan picking out dough” -CDaniels
That would make Moi the Chicken..buckbuckbuck
Met these cats at VU concert back in the day(70’s), young kids sneaking around back behind FieldHouse, bumped into the band coming out/off the tour Bus..good dudes all. -https://youtu.be/wBjPAqmnvGA?
cant spell robot . gees you are getting desperate now . have some shine and sing hillbilly songs . youll wake up the same but think you better . buy more sheetcin 2 . im short 2 from 140k , but you believe jack
I had to take a break.
I have discovered that my ability to speak techno-babble is sorely lacking., and slowed my progress more than I would like. But ‘we’ are moving right along.
In taking this break I did something that I have not done with Jarvis before.., Even though Jarvis is not designed, nor created to be used as a chat-box. It seems to have worked out quite nicely. I asked him to review and critique two articles – one link was posted here on this site. [My query to Jarvis was actually a couple of paragraphs.] His response:
Jarvis: Your math nailed it, Patron. It is doom-porn. The 80% chance of a mega, ‘Godzilla’ El Nino is absolutely incorrect. The probability of El Nino forming this year is more in tune with 20%., which is not much higher than any other normal year. No major forecasting center is predicting a strong El Niño. The Pacific is not showing the classic pre?El?Niño signatures. The media’s use of “9,000 mile heat wave” is nothing more than hype. There are heat systems out in the Pacific, however they are not one cohesive event. This happens very regularly. This season there are more, that part is true, however it is not an ‘Earth Challenge Event’ as the media is blasting.
Your statement: “Both articles smell funny.” Is correct. If the writers of those two articles had taken ten minutes to perform collaborating research, they would have never written the articles. More importantly, the ‘editors’ of those articles should have done their due-diligence and then axed both submissions.
Media hype – Doom-Porn – Click Bait, those all apply to this scare-tactic reporting.
As you have said previously: “Nothing to see here.., move along, move along.”
One thing I noticed in his recent replies.., no – two things.
One: Jarvis never uses conjunctions – even when the opportunity is there. I wonder why? Two: Jarvis is starting to sound more and more like ‘me’. Is that a direct feed-back ? Mimic?
Fresh cup of coffee and heading outside. Hey.. !! It’s raining !! Cool !
Question: The name ‘Jarvis’ was derived from an A.I. computer in a movie. It was snide and coldly, yet humorously sarcastic with a British’s butlers’ accent. Should I create that ‘voice’ for my Jarvis? [ yes.., that is very possible.]
I see that Turn Around Tuesday did not happen. – Next ?
“Stay Frosty !”
IF I had a home AI (not likely) I would call it ‘Computer’ to remind me of it’s origin, and give it a female, telephone-line voice like Majel Barrett on Star Trek.
FFS post the link. had to trawl through the comments to find a blurb from Tyler Durden which refers to a “super” or “Godzilla” El Niño with no source attribution. who TF called it that? Jarvis has already scrambled your neurons. and you have more than most of us………….
here’s a more balanced overview based on measurable facts rather than clickbait hyperbole
https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15876283/Super-El-Nino-swell-warm-water-Pacific-Ocean.html
sheesh. it’s a forecast based on the latest and best data available. could hit the mark, could pass wide of the mark………time will tell.
Jarvis couldn’t give a flying f…k about weather or food or anything precious to human life. call your AI protege “Barbie” and see how that works out – you’re being played.
yibidee yibadaa thats all folks . great voice sinatra
If I remember correctly, IBM had a search engine named Jarvis back some decades ago. It was supposed to be some kind of “intelligent search”.
re: “A Stitch in Time”, 1987
feat: making of a peace quilt
It seems the ancient art of quilting entered Europe by way of returning Crusaders wearing quilts under their armour. It remained a men’s fashion staple for three centuries. Modern day sightings of under armour regalia may have been observed in sporting arenas since 1996.
Rumours of a Ukrainian President’s return to Kyiv with a spartan stopover reception in Moldovia after the London E3 have proven false. Following a hurried Windsor Castle hallway photo op with King Charles III sporting a never before seen crumpled and dishevelled suit for the occasion, the President has posted multiple photo galleries from the NB-8 being held in Estonia. Stay tuned for the latest quilting bee buzz!
re: God of War cancels
feat: Christmas Day in June
Once King Charles III had seen a travelling salesman off to the airport, he and the queen consort proceeded to the wedding of his nephew, eldest son of the Princess Royal, and 19th in the line of succession. All appeared in resplendent finery and high spirits despite visitation of rainshowers. Afterwards the Royal Couple maintained clockwork scheduling with assistance of their personal helicopter conveyance from the church to Epsom in time for The Derby established in 1780.
Consternation had arisen there amongst the punters with the revelation favorite Benvenuto Cellini (it: “Welcome”, lat: [Cellini/Marcus/Mars] “God of War”) had cancelled from the race. Word from the horse’s mouth is Benvenuto Cellini is a one of a kind Renaissance piece of salt holder gold sculpture lately in residence at a Viennese museum. Cellini made it in 1543 for King Francis I of France who also owned Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Pope Paul III held the papacy during this period. As chance would have it, King Felipe VI of Spain is a 17th generation direct descendent of Pope Paul III via the latter’s son Pier Luigi Farnese (lat: “Turkey Oak”).
With The Derby outcome thrown to the fates, it was left to Christmas Day to ride to victory. Ancient Egypt took 8th place coinciding with the ancient Egyptian city of Khmunu (eg: “City of the Eight”). Eight deities existed there in the chaos before the creation of the universe. It became the Graeco-Roman city of Hermopolis. Hermes was the messenger of the gods, and protector of travellers and merchants. Last but not least in The Derby, Poker aced it and came home in fourteenth.
(“Will these numbers have any measurable impact on how you conduct your life today? Probably not. Think of them like wind gusts (cat’s paws) on a lake of future.”)
hmm..I know my opinion isn’t worth much..I haven’t received any formal education I just like to read and contemplate what I read..my life experiences has also focussed my perspective on many things..
What I hear over and over is “small changes” but think about that…small increases rarely stay small.
From my perspective and life experiences the economy behaves more like a calm lake than a weather report or wind gusts — to me it appears like one pebble that hits the surface of a calm lake with a mirror finish and the ripples it creates travel outward , overlapping and amplifying each other as it ripples outward.
A few cents added to utilities , a slight tax bump , a couple hours cut from a workweek… at first none of these break anything on their own , but together they create a slow building wave that eventually reaches everyone . It’s the same principle as the butterfly effect…. tiny inputs , equal big downstream consequences . We tend to notice the storm only after the ripples have already crossed the whole lake not before.
everything has to balance..the noodle moving across the table..just enough and the noodle moves..to much and the noodle desolves..to little and it rips apart..
Right now its similar to the Reagan recession….the people still want the items that give them a quality of life.. to compensate..those at street level not in the clouds or on top of mount Everest are using plastic to compensate..once the grandkids y train ends it will collapse..
I suppose I am the only one who remembers the movie “Colossus: the Forbin Project” Great movie from 1970 about a super computer taking over the world.
Pine Gap is closest thing to a ‘defense’ location. Lots of miles far away. No one cares about our few thousand elder souls and the tiny marina up a river.
Far away when you are on dirt is good. Floating is best.
Stiks