I have been watching on The Contrarians but they just finished for the night. DOJ asked for a 12 hour extension due to earlier thunder storms. Supposed to be done by early morning, they say.

In seriousness, people keep saying this happened today, but he’s owned the same amount of SpaceX for a long time. It’s just that it became easier to estimate the value of his stake today. He was a trillionaire last month too.

@dolmansaxlil Muffin, when teaching kindergarten and first grade, reported the same anecdotal observations as you. As for short stories, my thoughts on short stories as both a writer and a reader are also anecdotal and subjective. I think science fiction works very well in short forms. I read a ton of science fiction anthologies when I was a kid. Some science fiction stories really are about a very cool idea that's best told in a succinct, straightforward way. Expanding them beyond that idea feels like padding, and the extra material detracts from the punch that comes from delivering the answer to the story question and quitting. To me, fantasy requires worldbuilding that doesn't work as well in a short work. Romance can work, but you lose the ups and downs ot several rounds of will-they-or-won't-they and/or they-did-but-was-it-a-bad-idea? I have to believe that mystery short stories can work, since I write them. Editors give a lot of latitude for mystery shorts, generally requiring that the story involve a crime without requiring that it be a play-fair mystery that gives the reader all the clues. I, however, prefer my stories to have clues and a logical structure, so that's what I write. I find that it's hard to pull that off in less than 5000 words (~20 manuscript pages) and I prefer to have at least 6000 words.(~24 manuscript pages.) Literary short stories are their own thing. When I like them, I really like them. When I don't, they feel plotless and self-indulgent. I really admire George Saunders and Elizabeth McCullough when it comes to literary stories. When it comes to (sometimes fairly weird) flash stories, Lydia Davis more or less made that arena her own.

What Bernard said. Most of us would like to look forward.

This is great. I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of hydrogen since, to date, it has basically been a battery technology not a true energy source. But this is different. Apparently there are around 2x the recoverable reserves of hydrogen as there are of nat gas. I had no idea!

Glad everyone is OK.

Out for a walk around a local Wildlife Trust area with ponds and river and there were loads of ox eye daisy, flocks and campion. And lovely water lilies [image: 1781236077354-20260607_120015-resized.jpg] Meanwhile my sisters garden is in full bloom with yellow scabious [image: 1781236426195-20260609_130953.jpg] A pure white peony [image: 1781236447723-20260609_130813-resized.jpg] And rampant fragrant rose with clematis [image: 1781236523498-20260609_130719.jpg]

It’s clearly the work of those same aliens responsible for crop circles.

I just did a Google's AI search about relations between country x and country y. I thought I was reading Cold War propaganda. It was wild.

[image: 1781183934674-img_2824.jpeg]

Oh, it just occurred to me that maximum annual contribution and market volatility are not related to each other. Duh. I had to leave the USAA page alone and do something else. It's almost sunset. It's finally cooled off again. I might return to it tonight. I might wait until tomorrow.

@Mark Place "WOW" emoji here.