Plot twist: they were my footprints.

I hopped off the porch and went for a walk. After a few steps, the ice was so hard I just walked on top of it, not sinking in, leaving no footprints.

I didn’t realize how weird the remaining prints looked until my husband went out and was like “wtf”.

The footprints that just stop in the middle of nowhere.

Husband saw this on our yard and was like, “did someone get fucking raptured?”

"Weapons" was a movie I hadn't even heard of, but it was good.

It's a 2025 horror/mystery movie with an ensemble cast, including Josh Brolin. From the same director of the 2022 horror film Barbarian, and of similar quality.

The premise is that at 2:17am in this random suburban town, a couple dozen kids from the same class all disappeared. They all walked outside their front doors, ran away, and were not seen again. Except one kid in the class.

As parents freak out, and the police aren't getting many leads, the story then follows multiple people to see what's going on. It's tense and dark, well-directed and and well-acted.

I have rather few criticisms of the film. They made some characters a bit more unlikable/annoying than they needed to, which made it slightly hard to get attached at first, but that wasn't insurmountable. And although the story does take into account the existence of doorbell cameras and such, I felt that at today's level of surveillance, what happened is unrealistic. And the resolution felt slightly rushed.

Overall, a surprisingly strong film in a genre that isn't particularly my favorite. Was entertained and tense throughout.

Trump has said that he would pick the next Fed chair tomorrow. Odds rapidly jumped for Warsh.

No matter who it is, nothing stops this train.

So I watched The Rip. A Miami cop movie with Affleck and Damon.

I liked the first half quite a bit. Really intense opening scene, good mystery setup, high emotional stakes, etc. Always happy to see Affleck and Damon together.

The second half lost me a bit. Some aspects seemed unrealistic enough to distract me and pull me out of it. And I felt the heavy hand of the writers/director in terms of character choices not really making sense, convenient scene changes, etc.

But, all together a solid cop movie. Glad I watched it.

So far out of this recent run of movies, Sinners is comfortably my top choice even though I had some issues in the third act.

That move in DXY is nothing compared to the massive move in gold and precious metals. Precious metals are up vs everything, and by a massive magnitude.

Bull market in gold vs oil, gold vs houses, gold vs stocks, gold vs bitcoin, gold vs dollars, gold vs euro, gold vs yen, etc.

DXY is back down to the same level it was at during the 1990s when gold was like $300/oz. That just compares the dollar vs other fiat currencies, and it's like a 13% move this year vs 100% for gold and nearly 300% for silver.

It’s wrong when they say it for bitcoin, too.

I see some people saying, “it’s not gold going up, it’s the dollar going down” and things like that.

That’s not really the case, and there’s a simple test to see why.

When a currency crashes, it loses value relative to everything. Other currencies, real estate, stocks, precious metals, etc. Prices of normal goods and services skyrocket.

In this bull run, precious metals gained value vs other things. Gold vs oil. Gold vs stocks. Gold vs real estate. Silver vs oil, etc.

The dollar is rangebound vs other major currencies. The supply growth of the dollar this past year was 5%. It’s gold and other precious metals that went up vs everything. Partly based on fundamentals, and now seemingly due to momentum.

Now, where there is some truth to the statement: central banks in aggregate haven’t added to their holding of treasuries in ten years. The only foreign treasury purchases have been in the private sector, and at a rate lower than total US debt growth. But central banks have been buying gold. There is indeed a gradual shift toward neutral reserve assets afoot, ever since around 2009.

But that a very long process. That source of demand didn’t single-handedly drive the huge boom in precious metals over this past year. This was like a volleyball held under water and let go, soaring back up.

Yep it’s been disappointing lately. I expected $150k in 2025 but we only got to $126k.

That’s what diversification is for.

And it was $6.9k before that, when I first recommended it.