Proud member of the control group. "Winter of Death" survivor. Prefers ugly truths over pretty lies. Bassist and songwriter. Oh, and lawyer.
Texas
Joined August 2021
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Jay Plays Bass retweeted
Gold just dropped about $86 in three days and almost nobody is talking about the real reason.
It wasn't the dollar. The dollar index barely moved, sitting around 102 all week.
It was the bond market.
Here is the chain I watch every single morning before I touch XAUUSD, and why it matters more right now than it has all year.
Step 1: Oil
WTI is near $95. Brent is above $105.
This morning's CPI came in at 3.7% headline but only 2.6% core.
That 1.1% gap is mostly energy. Inflation is being dragged up by oil, not by the whole economy.
Step 2: The Fed
Hot headline inflation makes it very hard for the Fed to cut.
Every time the market prices out a cut, bond traders demand a higher yield to hold government debt.
Step 3: Bond yields
The US 10 year is at 5.19%.
The 30 year is at 5.53%.
Think about that from a big fund's point of view. Gold pays zero. A US government bond pays over 5% with almost no risk. Every extra bit of yield makes holding gold more expensive, so they trim it.
Step 4: Real yields
This is the one most retail traders miss.
Gold doesn't react to yields alone. It reacts to yields after inflation.
If yields climb faster than inflation, gold gets crushed.
If inflation climbs faster than yields, gold usually shines.
Right now yields are winning.
Step 5: The dollar
Normally the dollar is the first thing people check. This week it told you nothing. That is the clue. When gold falls and the dollar is flat, the pressure is coming from yields.
How I actually use this
Before New York opens I check three things:
The 10 year yield. Up big overnight means I am careful with longs.
Oil. If oil is spiking, headline inflation fears come back and yields usually follow.
The dollar. Only as a tie breaker.
If yields and the dollar are both rising, I don't fight it.
If yields are rolling over while gold holds its level, that is where the better long setups tend to show up.
What I'm watching now
Yields have started to slip. The 10 year has gone from 5.24% to 5.19% in two days.
If that continues while oil stays firm, gold has room to bounce.
If oil keeps running and the next data prints hot again, yields can push back up and gold stays heavy.
Most traders stare at the gold chart all day. The best clue is usually on a different chart.
Which one do you check first before you trade gold, the dollar or the 10 year?
Jay Plays Bass retweeted
Unpopular opinion: In 5 years, we'll need more software engineers than we do today. Not fewer.
Everyone is calculating how many developers AI can replace. If a team of 3 can now do the work of 10, surely the other 7 are out of a job?
I think that completely misses what's about to happen.
For decades, the biggest constraint on software wasn't the lack of problems worth solving. It was the cost of solving them.
Millions of businesses still run on spreadsheets, emails, WhatsApp messages, and outdated software. Not because they're happy with it, but because spending $200,000 on a custom system never made financial sense.
Now imagine that same system costs $20,000. Suddenly, millions of businesses that couldn't afford software development become potential customers. Projects that were never viable become viable. Companies that already build software can afford to do ten times more.
And here's the part people underestimate: the cheaper software becomes, the more reasons we'll find to build it.
Of course, some jobs will disappear. Certain tasks that once required entire teams will be handled by a single engineer. But assuming the amount of software the world needs is fixed is a pretty strange assumption, especially in an industry where we've barely scratched the surface of what can be automated.
I could be wrong, but I think we're heading toward an explosion in software demand, not the death of software engineering.
We're confusing the declining cost of writing code with the declining demand for software engineers. They're not the same thing.
Jay Plays Bass retweeted
This is the most remarkable story Ray Bradbury ever shared with me. He told it late at nigh, sitting in his den of antiquities and mementos. Take five minutes to read this. It’s pure magic.
#Writing #Living #Creativity #RayBradbury #Book
Jay Plays Bass retweeted
The Democrats' embrace of Islam confirms they never wanted “separation of church and state."
They lied...
They wanted the separation of "Christ and state."
Jay Plays Bass retweeted
i am so tired of people shit talking texas because "it's too hot."
you know what's great about texas? sunshine. water. and this incredible invention called air conditioning.
you know what actually sucks? the cold. waking up to gray skies for months on end. shoveling snow. scraping ice off your windshield. putting on 5,000 layers just to walk outside and still feeling like your fingers are going to fall off.
i would rather sweat my ass off walking to my air-conditioned car than spend half the year freezing and miserable.
and with all the money you're saving on state income taxes, you can afford to take a vacation somewhere cooler when you need a break.
i will die on this hill. texas heat is not that bad. winter is infinitely worse.
Jay Plays Bass retweeted
We were told the shot stays in your arm. It doesn’t.
The mRNA is wrapped in tiny fat bubbles. Those bubbles leak out of the muscle and travel through your blood. Almost every cell in your body has a fatty coating, so the bubbles get swallowed by whatever cells they bump into — heart cells, liver cells, brain cells, reproductive organs.
Once inside, the cell reads the message and starts making a piece of the virus. Your immune system sees one of your own cells pumping out a foreign protein and assumes the cell is infected. So it kills it.
There’s no “only go to muscle cells” instruction. Which organs get hit is mostly luck. That’s the real design problem — not just the spike protein, but a delivery system that turns random cells into targets.
That’s why critics call it a flawed platform. Until they can aim these fat bubbles at the right cells and keep them there, every new version carries the same basic risk.
The far left eats the centrist left. Sheeran's crime is not being "left" enough.
Ed Sheeran is one of the nicest guys in the business. He called Macklemore a friend, then refused to blow up an entire tour so hundreds of people behind the scenes wouldn’t lose their jobs. He didn’t pick a side. He thought about everyone else.
Macklemore played with other people’s money and someone who was kind to him. That’s the difference.
Ed is 100% class. Macklemore remains trash.
Jay Plays Bass retweeted
The day three fans heard Highway to Hell before anyone else.
On May 18, 1979, three friends, Trace, Mark, and Wade, drove 160 kilometers from St. Louis to Springfield, Illinois, to see AC/DC. When they arrived, they found that the show was sold out. Instead of heading home, they decided to hang around the parking lot of the Bel-Air Motel, hoping to at least get a close look at their idols.
Luck was on their side: not only did they run into the band and take photos with them, but they also received passes to get into that night’s concert. While the musicians were signing albums for fans before heading backstage to change, Malcolm Young asked them if they wanted to hear the new album. They were taken aback, not even knowing it existed. “Highway to Hell, we’ve got a tape on the tour bus,” Malcolm told them with a smile.
They were left alone on the tour bus, and there the three of them listened to the album months before its official release in the United States, becoming some of the first people in the world to hear that classic.
Jay Plays Bass retweeted
All week long I've been watching two things without wanting to.
The fallout from the Lindsay Clancy trial and this ridiculous LSU-SEC saga.
And last night when I heard some inside word on what's actually going on with the SEC thing, it finally struck me that these two things are actually the same story playing out in different venues.
LSU is that one juror who insisted she was guilty. And LSU is spending a whole week being berated by hyperemotional, hysterical people making outlandish accusations, threats and demands despite not actually doing anything wrong.
LSU is "arrogant" and refuses to respect the feelings of the rest of the group, and must be thrown off the jury. So the group engages people who talk for a living, and in particular bald old men who shamelessly toe the party line, to make fiery statements about punishing the juror for holding to his position.
And then there's the army of people on social media, equally hysterical, who screech about the juror while inventing theories which don't actually hold up to scrutiny.
People on the jury who came to the deliberations with a conventional view then get swept along in the hysteria, taking a position they previously would have thought was unwise, but afraid to buck the mob.
Everyone's guns are trained on that one juror. They don't like him.
But they can't prove anything he did which is actually deserving of their scorn and threats.
Eventually the hysteria blows over. But not before damage is done. Trust is lost. Hard feelings remain.
Does the truth will out? Hard to say. Moments of mass hysteria very rarely lead to clarity.
Jay Plays Bass retweeted
"AI could kill us all one day" is the new "climate change is an existential threat"
It's not true, and even if it were true, nobody's willing to do what's necessary to stop it globally, so why worry?
In the long run, we are all dead
Jay Plays Bass retweeted
Sankey Files Complaint Against Rousse For Using ‘Moot’ and Several Other Words He Doesn’t Understand thesadvocate.com/2026/09/fea…
Jay Plays Bass retweeted
LSU does not have to violate an SEC rule to be expelled. The bylaws don’t make expulsion contingent on “cause” or “loss of institutional control.” If 2/3 of the members vote to terminate LSU’s membership, that’s enough. The rule violation argument is beside the point.
