activescott's Notes

Public notes from activescott

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

Saturday, August 22, 2026

Beef is so expensive right now because drought, high grain prices, inflation and rising interest rates made cattle farming a costly endeavor in recent years. To deal with rising operating costs, many U.S. cattle farmers reduced the size of their herds — and some got out of the business altogether. As a result, the U.S. cattle inventory is the smallest it’s been since 1951.

Tariffs add another wrinkle. President Donald Trump has instituted wide-ranging tariffs throughout his second term, many of which included beef and other agricultural products imported into the U.S. Trump rolled back some food-related tariffs in November.

The cost of tariffs are typically passed through to consumers.

  • Inflation drove up input costs, which haven’t receded, making it expensive all around to care for livestock.

  • Drought conditions continue to impact pastures in cattle regions, which can force producers to spend more on feed.

  • Record-high prices can be good for farmers selling cattle. But anyone looking to expand their herd is paying those same sums.

  • High interest rates mean producers are paying more for operating loans, which many rely on to run their businesses.

Tariffs will have a definite impact on consumer prices that could last for years. The beef industry relies on both imports and exports, and it’s no simple task to find new markets and reroute global supply chains. Prices will rise in the short-term while producers decide how to adapt to the new conditions. And long-term, it’s unclear whether tariffs will leave producers better off or worse, which would have consequences for prices.

To solve this, Dalio said the U.S. needs to carefully employ a three-part strategy to get the budget deficit down to 3% of gross domestic product.

First, Dalio said the U.S. government needs to reduce its spending. Second, he said tax revenue needs to be raised. Finally, the New York native and Harvard Business School alumni said lower interest rates were needed.

“All three need to happen concurrently so as to prevent any one from being too large,” Dalio said. “If any one is too large, the adjustment will be traumatic.”

Dalio cautioned against ramming through these adjustments by “force.” For instance, “it would be very bad if the Federal Reserve unnaturally forced interest rates down,” he said.

Dalio said it’s important to to take steps now, while the economy is healthy. An economy in recession requires increased government spending, he said.

Dalio said the exact timing of a debt crisis can be swayed by variables ranging from military conflict to political change. On its current trajectory, the U.S. could enter such a crisis in as early as one year or as late as five. “My guess, which I suppose will be a bad one, is that it will come in three years, give or take two, if the course we’re on is not changed.”

To prepare, Dalio recommended investors are underweight debt assets, such as bonds.

As much as 10% to 15% of a portfolio could land in gold, as well as “a bit” of bitcoin, the hedge fund founder said.

Friday, August 21, 2026

Mamdani has defended the tax as a fair way to generate $500m in annual revenue in a city with vast socioeconomic inequality. The surcharge - which several other cities and countries have in different forms - has won the support of Governor Kathy Hochul, who previously was hesitant to raise New Yorkers' taxes.

The mayor ran on a campaign platform of affordability, pledging to raise taxes to cover services like universal child care, and free and faster buses. His pledge to increase taxes has sparked backlash from some of the city's wealthiest residents who claim it will discourage people from buying homes and investing in the US's largest city.

Representatives for Mamdani's administration did not attend Tuesday's hearing, which angered some in attendance.

A spokesperson for Mamdani told the BBC the administration asked to push back the hearing while it dealt with the legal challenge, but the council declined and officials cannot testify on the matter while it's being litigated.

Jason Haber, who runs the American Real Estate Association, said the list of names and addresses threatens people's safety.

But Morris Pearl, a former managing director at investment firm BlackRock, said the idea that people were choosing not to invest in the city because of the tax was "absurd".

"The whole point of being rich is you can live wherever you want," said Pearl, a chair of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy Americans who advocate for taxing the rich.

"Someone who owns a residence that is not their primary residence that's worth more than $5m has the ability to pay more than most New Yorkers do."

Across the world, some countries and cities already experiment with similar secondary home taxes.

In France, homes are subject to an additional charge that varies across the country, with a 60% local tax surcharge for homes in Paris. The tax has generated billions of euros in revenue.

The city of Vancouver in Canada has an Empty Homes Tax on residences that are vacant or under-used for more than six months of a calendar year. The tax - 3% of the property's value - began in 2017 to help improve housing affordability.

Research from Canadian think tank C. D. Howe Institute found the tax has raised as much as $194m in revenue in eight years, and has reduced housing vacancies by as much as 21%, but has done little to bring down the average cost of rent.

In San Francisco, California, residents in 2022 voted for an Empty Homes Tax, which required owners to pay between $2,500 to $20,000 for apartments that are vacant for six months or more.

But like in New York, the tax faced fierce opposition from real estate and landlord groups in the technology hub, and after a group sued, a judge found the tax unconstitutional. It remains in limbo as the city appeals.

Pearl said the New York City administration's decision to launch the tax with a list of wealthy residents may not have been the most diplomatic choice.

"I do think that the mayor himself - I have suggested that he sort of unnecessarily antagonises people occasionally," Pearl said.

But, he added, "I'm with him on the policy."

Thursday, August 20, 2026

Still, until now, most of Stripe’s large acquisitions have been related to helping people collect and manage incoming cash. Buying OpenRouter looks like a move to the other side of the ledger, too: expense management, beginning with AI expenses.

This acquisition “is Stripe’s deliberate attempt to embed itself into the middle of capital flows in the AI era,” said PitchBook’s research analyst Franco Granda.

It’s joining an unusual assortment of companies also entering token expense management. Databricks developed its own AI gateway. Rippling just launched one focused on employee AI spend and ROI. Ramp just launched one, also for AI expense management. And the list goes on.

#

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Monday, August 17, 2026

Gravis Robotics AG said today it has bagged $200 million in funding from SoftBank Group Corp. in what is the largest-ever Series A round for a construction robotics startup.

The startup was founded in 2022 after being spun out of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, having developed intelligent, software-defined systems for heavy excavators. Its software transforms them into self-operating machinery that’s able to navigate busy construction sites and perform work autonomously, without human drivers.

Completely false. I like Gavin's takes, but whoever he heard this from is lying so that it fits the narrative some people so desperately want you to believe. The same people will try to convince you Anthropic has no moat, and a sentence later that it might become so powerful it could be the only company left. In fact, one of the things we are _most_ worried about is economic concentration of power. There is no world where the government should let any company have that much influence. We need competition and capitalism. darioamodei.com/essay/the-adol… The AI market is literally the most competetive market in the world right now - every single one of the largest companies on earth is singularly focused on getting you smarter, cheaper models. If it all works out, we'll succeed in reducing the cost of everything to the cost of energy. This is awesome, but it threatens a lot of people's old moats. They are frightened. For sure with AGI capitalism gets _super_ weird and what a company even is might look different. Good takes here: dwarkesh.com/p/ai-firm.

Sunday, August 16, 2026

The alarming milestone at Lake Powell, reached Saturday, comes about a week after the river’s other major reservoir, Lake Mead, also hit a historic low. Plummeting water levels pose a major threat to the Colorado River Basin, which is a key resource for wildlife, hydropower and more than 40 million people in seven U.S. states.

The reservoir is now about 30 feet (9.1 meters) away from the point at which turbines would stop producing hydroelectric power. Federal officials warned in April that a “major intervention” would be necessary to avoid reaching that threshold by the end of this year.

The crisis has been in the making for years. Both reservoirs are at the lowest they have been in nearly seven decades, and levels may continue to drop, USBR data shows.

The last time their combined storage was this small was in May 1957 when Glen Canyon Dam that holds back Powell was being built, according to a recent paper published by a group of academics and retired water officials. Powell began to fill in 1963.