"Why Nvidia’s deal with Meta is an ‘Intel killer,’ according to this analyst" (NVDA; META; ARM; INTC; AVGO)

From MarketWatch, February 18:

The use of Nvidia CPUs could signal a significant shift toward Arm-based chips in the data center 

Nvidia’s expanded partnership with Meta Platforms could be a bad omen for Intel.

Nvidia announced on Tuesday that it will deploy more of its Arm-based Grace central processing units in Meta’s data centers for what the chip maker called “the first large-scale Nvidia Grace-only deployment.” The CPUs are used for tasks such as running applications and agents.

To Richard Windsor, founder of research firm Radio Free Mobile, the expanded partnership is “a sign that the move towards Arm in the data center is accelerating.” For Intel, whose x86 CPU architecture competes with Arm’s eponymous architecture, that “is more terrible news,” he said in a Wednesday note, in which he called the deal an “Intel killer.” 

Intel has long dominated the server chip market, Windsor said, while Arm-based chips “have often floundered” due to incompatibility with legacy software systems in data centers. That’s likely becoming a thing of the past, Windsor noted, judging by Nvidia’s Meta deal....

....MUCH MORE 

MarketWatch's confreres at Barron's have more, though I still haven't seen anything more specific on the revenue to Nvidia beyond "tens of billions of dollars."

 Nvidia Wins Meta Deal. Its Gain Is Broadcom’s Loss.

WTF: California Is Importing Gasoline From The Bahamas

From Los Angeles Today, February 17: 

....Gasoline refined along the US Gulf Coast is first shipped roughly 1,100 to 1,300 nautical miles to Freeport in the Bahamas, where it is stored at large transshipment hubs before being re-exported. From there, tankers travel another 4,000 to 4,500 nautical miles through the Panama Canal and up the West Coast to Los Angeles or San Francisco. The added leg builds extra shipping, storage and handling costs into wholesale gasoline prices. While routing fuel through the Bahamas can still be cheaper than chartering scarce US-flagged tankers, the detour adds time and complexity.

• In November 2026, more than 40% of California's gasoline imports were routed through the Bahamas....

MUCH MORE

Now I'm a fairly open-minded person, open, let's say, to definitional nuance, but that does not seem very "green". On the other hand it adds new irony to this bit of 'definitional nuance' we reprised yesterday:

 Facing Possible Economic Collapse, California's Governor Newsom Backtracks On Oil Industry Attacks

He says he's not backtracking, just advancing in a new direction:

“That's not rolling back anything. That's actually marching forward in a way that is thoughtful and considered..."

—Governor Gavin Newsom via KCRA-3 Television, Sacramento, July 4, 2025

—California Gasoline Prices Jump 40 Cents Per Gallon, Flirting With $5.00 

"OpenAI, SpaceX and other IPOs could break the S&P 500, Jeremy Grantham says"

Ummm, yes.*

From Mark Hulbert at MarketWatch, February 17:

How an overheated IPO market this year could derail U.S. stocks 

     IPO excitement would be a challenge for the stock market.

Jeremy Grantham has a new and provocative argument for why the U.S. stock market will produce mediocre returns this year.

Grantham is the co-founder of GMO, the Boston-based investment firm. He has been bearish on the U.S. stock market for more than a decade and, so far at least, he’s been wrong.

Yet Grantham commands a wide following on Wall Street. Though early in forecasting both the bursting of the internet bubble and the bear market during the global financial crisis, Grantham had the last laugh. Most stock-market analysts would disagree with Grantham’s current bearishness, but worry that they dismiss his arguments at their peril. 

Grantham’s latest bearish case is that U.S. stocks could be sabotaged this year by an overheated IPO market. In a recent 2026 outlook event at GMO, Grantham said:

“My prediction is that 2026 is going to see a level of IPO excitement that we haven’t seen in a while. My guess is that at least two of the private giants (OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX) will go public, and this is likely to put pressure on the U.S. market later in the year. … Post-IPOs, initially, maybe the market rises, but longer term, as more stockholders are able to monetize, that will create a challenge for the U.S. market.”

How much of a challenge for the stock market would such IPO “excitement” cause? GMO calculates that, historically, a 1% increase in the stock market’s total market capitalization because of IPOs corresponds to a 7.5% decrease in the market’s subsequent 12-month return.

Since the U.S. stock market’s total market cap is currently around $50 trillion, a 1% increase would require an IPO from a company with a value of at least $500 billion. The AI companies Grantham mentions would come close to that threshold or exceed it, given their recent valuations in the private market....

....MUCH MORE
*Subjects near and dear: supply, demand, liquidity etc. 

October 2008 - IPOs Produce Smallest Gains Since 1995 as Offerings Increase

Supply and demand. The one effect I can guarantee is the sopping up of billions of dollars and yuan* that would otherwise go into currently trading issues. IPO exits are not only a sign of a top but actually help bring them on by removing some liquidity....

December 2018 - "Nasdaq, 'Tech,' & IPOs are in for Gut-Wrencher"

The Fed's interest rate moves are not that big a deal.
I know that runs counter to a lot of commentary but the upticks are not a problem. Yet.
The bigger headwind facing the market is the Fed's balance sheet unwind sucking up liquidity.
And next year's planned mega-IPOs threatening to do the same....

September 2025 - "US IPO Activity On Track For Best Quarter Since Q1 2022"

This is what we were referring to introducing August 6's "Blackstone prepares portfolio companies for IPOs":

One of the reasons markets trend higher is a lack of new shares coming on to the market.

Over the last few months the IPO window has been opening and the offerings absorb buying power that would otherwise go into issues already trading.

See also: supply/demand.

The Wall Street marketeers are nothing if not opportunistic.

And depending on how much stuff they are primping, packaging, and pushing, this is why stock offerings tend to mark the short/intermediate-term tops in markets.

Just something to be aware of, not a hard and fast rule.

Regarding Mr. Grantham, though he is historically early—keeping in mind that if you are too early, you're not early, you're wrong, I think he is right about the market direction later this year, if not the exact trigger we will point back to.

Anyhoo, we've been keeping track of the G-man's prognostications for a very long time. Here's the outro from a December 2022 post:

....Grantham's problem, shared by moi, is that just because one sees an anomaly, there really isn't any reason to think the market will act on it in the time frame that you think it might.

Way back in 2010 we were posting "Grantham’s ‘Horrifically Early’ Calls Challenge GMO".

Fast forward to June 2020 and Mr. G. was going short, which we dutifully noted. Followed by November 2020's: "Grantham's Short Call Cost His Hedge Fund Over $2 Billion".

One example of where Mr. Grantham isn't just early but wrong is seen in 2012's: 

Vaclav Smil Takes on Jeremy Grantham Over Peak Fertilizer

We posted the whole of Mr. Grantham's Nov. 15 Nature piece for fear it would go behind Nature's paywall.
To date it hasn't. Also to date I haven't come through on my assurance in Nov. 24ths "Jeremy Grantham "On the Road to Zero Growth" as His Co-head of Asset Allocation Does the Full Monty". I promise I'll get to it.

We have almost as many posts on Professor Smil as we do on Mr. Grantham. This is the first time they've been together. I feel very uncomfortable being on the opposite side of Mr. G on just about anything but in this case Smil is right.

From The American:
Jeremy Grantham, Starving for Facts....

Finally, as one commenter at Cowen's Marginal Revolution put it: 

Jeremy Grantham sells ideas for a living. He is and always will be primarily a salesman, and he is very good at his job. A salesman wants to persuade you by engaging you in any way possible, but in particular by engaging your emotions. He is not interested in a deep understanding of all sides of an issue; he only needs to know enough to engage you. A deeper understanding would in fact be harmful to his needs, as his certainty is part of the appeal; a deeper knowledge would lead to doubts and uncertainties that might un-nerve the buyer.

Mr. Grantham avoids a deeper understanding of the ideas he is peddling almost instinctively; he is not so much argumentative as dismissive; he does not concede that there is any doubt at all to dispute. He doesn't truly care about the long term; he is selling medium-term fear to short-term clients. He only needs (or wants) to know enough to complete the sale. Personally, I'm not buying, but I can see why he is successful as a salesman. As a font of wisdom, not so much. The interview was interesting only in so far as it made clear how people are profiting from promoting apocalyptic climate fear.

And from October 2019:

How Good (or bad) Are GMO and Jeremy Grantham's Market Calls?

Chinese Teacher Quits Her Job, Begins Selling Coffins To Europe, Ramps To $6 Million Revenue

From the South China Morning Post, February 16:

29-year-old whose hometown is known for its lightweight wood says she has no business fears because ‘people die every day’ 

In China, death is traditionally seen as a taboo and often tied to bad luck.

But in Heze, a city in eastern China’s Shandong province, this cultural barrier has given rise to a booming industry.

According to Personage magazine, Lisa Liu, 29, from Heze was once a teacher. Exhausted and hoarse from the pressure of work, Liu switched careers in July 2023.

After a chance interview, she went into coffin sales, focusing on the European market, particularly Italy.

Her boss took her on a tour of the factory, where she saw the entire coffin production process, from log cutting to carving and assembly.

To the workers, a coffin was just a wooden object. Some even used empty urns as storage boxes at home.

This helped Liu overcome her superstitions about coffins being “inauspicious”.

Unlike heavy, dark-coloured Chinese coffins, Italian ones are lighter and often feature religious carvings.

In China, cremation involves only the body, whereas in Italy, both the body and coffin are cremated together.

Heze is reportedly home to three million paulownia trees, known for being lightweight, having a low ignition point and featuring beautiful grain, therefore making them ideal for the Italian market.

According to the mainland Chinese media outlet Jimu News, Heze’s coffins, priced between US$90 and US$150, are more affordable than European coffins, which range from US$1,100 to US$2,100.

Liu’s factory reportedly exports around 40,000 coffins to Europe each year, generating an annual revenue of nearly 40 million yuan (US$6 million).....

 

 ....MUCH MORE

Fun fact: there are at least 50 million people surnamed Liu in China. 

As noted back in 2020:

....The other writer Nicolle Liu shares a surname with some 50 - 60 million other Liu's, including the Chinese Vice-Premier, Liu He.

I know some Liu's, from a rather noteworthy Beijing branch of the fam who informed me of this when I would ask if they were related to this Liu or that Liu. 

Electric Vehicles: "Ford Looks for Model-T Redux with UEV Plan" (F)

Will they all be painted black? 

From Counterpoint Research February 17:

• Even as Ford pushes back into a richer mix of ICE and hybrid vehicles better suited to its core North American market, it is talking about its new EV program – Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV), which bears zero relation to any previous Ford EV.
• Ford has assembled a small team of technologists and cloistered them in Long Beach, California, far from its Michigan heartland, and given them carte blanche to develop an EV platform true to the spirit of Ford.
• Ford is not trying to develop a flagship car with an aspirational price tag. It is cleaving to the idea originally espoused by Henry Ford in the Model-T over a hundred years ago.
• The first model based on the UEV is a mid-sized truck starting at $30,000. Its design is reckoned to be 15% more aerodynamically efficient than the best competing truck. 

Ford, along with several other Western automakers, has had a difficult time with EV development. The company’s Q4 2025 earnings were messy, with a net loss of over $11 billion on previously disclosed writedowns associated with its EV programs. However, the underlying business execution at Ford is improving as it pushes back into a richer mix of ICE and hybrid vehicles better suited to its core North American market, especially given the US government’s wavering commitment to the EV transition.

Against this background, it might seem strange that Ford is talking about its new EV program –Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) (or, as someone cheekily put it, FUEV!). However, the UEV, first announced in August 2025, bears zero relation to any previous Ford EV; this is a 100% clean sheet development, and it has a lot of interesting details. There are still many question marks, but what it has revealed so far looks promising in a way that is encouraging, and encouragingly different for a Western automaker.

The A-Team

As a kid, I used to enjoy watching the ‘A-Team’ television series in which an unlikely assortment of characters would work innovatively against seemingly impossible odds to win the day. It might be stretching the analogy here, but Ford has assembled a small team of technologists and cloistered them in Long Beach, California, far from its Michigan heartland, and given them carte blanche to develop an EV platform true to the spirit of Ford.

The team is led by Alan Clarke, an ex-Tesla engineer who heads the Advanced Electric Vehicle Development unit. His tight-knit group of engineers, technologists and aerodynamicists – many of the latter drawn from Formula-1 backgrounds – is untainted by association with Ford’s previous EV programs.

Model-T roots

An EV true to the spirit of Ford needs to be understood. Ford is not trying to develop a flagship car with an aspirational price tag. It is cleaving to the idea originally espoused by Henry Ford in the Model-T over a hundred years ago. The Model-T was revolutionary because it was deliberately designed and priced as a mass product rather than a luxury good, and then built using radical new mass‑production methods that slashed costs and prices over time. By adopting a simple, durable and easy‑to‑repair platform design, Ford made car ownership realistic for ordinary middle‑class and even working‑class families. Now, it is trying to do that again, but for the EV era and one that’s fun to drive, a non-negotiable for the design team....

....MUCH MORE 

"Why investors are getting the US debasement trade all wrong"

A Reuters mini-essay from Joachim Klement whose substack tagline is:

Thoughts on financial markets by a grumpy, middle-aged German. What more do you want? Click to read Klement on Investing, by Joachim Klement, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers. 

From Reuters, February 15: 

Chatter about the “dollar debasement” trade has become omnipresent, but one measure of risk suggests that investors are getting it all wrong. They are overestimating the trouble the dollar faces while underestimating the threat to U.S. Treasuries.

 

The dollar has depreciated against all major currencies over the last 12 months, while gold and other precious metals have sky-rocketed, recently hitting all-time highs. Does that mean we’re seeing debasement in action? Not necessarily, or at least, it’s not that straightforward.

 

While the term “debasement trade” is ill-defined, it appears to consist of two elements. On one side, investors are worried about a devaluation of the U.S. dollar if discontent with U.S. policy – whether fiscal or foreign – makes money managers reduce their exposure to the greenback, meaning it might no longer act as a safe haven and could even lose its status as the world’s reserve currency.

 

From the other perspective, investors are concerned that the U.S.’s eroding fiscal situation may eventually trigger a sharp devaluation of U.S. Treasuries – or, in extreme scenarios, a default – and a corresponding devaluation of the U.S. dollar.

 

On the face of it, the case for both seems pretty weak. The dollar declined around 10% last year, but that was after it rose by roughly 50% in the prior decade, and it’s nowhere near losing its status as the world’s reserve currency.

 

Meanwhile, Treasury yields are hardly ringing alarm bells.

 

But there’s another way to measure whether investors are growing more skittish about holding dollars or Treasuries: their so-called “convenience yield”. This is essentially the difference in yield between holding the U.S. dollar or Treasuries outright and creating synthetic versions of these assets via a series of currency and options trades.

 

Investors may do the latter because they need Treasury exposure but either don’t want to take on the credit risk of the U.S. as a counterparty or own government bonds from other countries that they cannot sell.

 

Creating a synthetic dollar or Treasury is cumbersome, so the replications should offer higher yields.

 

If the investors conducting these trades – typically among the most sophisticated in the world such as hedge funds and central banks – were afraid of dollar debasement, we should observe a declining convenience yield.

 

And we’re not, at least not if we’re looking at the dollar. The convenience yield for the greenback against the euro has remained stable for the last ten years and has stayed in positive territory, meaning investors would rather hold dollars than replicate them....

....MUCH MORE 

Here's his substack:

https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/

French Tech: "Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch’s $1.4B Data Center Push Powers Europe’s A.I. Autonomy"

French, with a Swedish accent.

From Observer, February 12:

Arthur Mensch is turning Mistral into Europe’s strongest contender for sovereign A.I. infrastructure and technological independence. 

Mistral AI co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch knows that it isn’t just France but all of Europe that relies on his startup to deliver an alternative to U.S. powerhouses like OpenAI. In its first-ever foreign A.I. infrastructure investment, the Paris-based company is committing 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) to build data centers across Sweden, it announced yesterday (Feb. 11).

“This investment is a concrete step towards building independent capabilities in Europe, dedicated to A.I.,” said Mensch in a statement. The move will focus on expanding advanced compute capacity and localized A.I. capabilities, and is expected to further reinforce the region’s “strategic autonomy and competitiveness,” he added. 

Mensch previously worked on large language models and multimodal systems at Google DeepMind before co-founding Mistral in 2023 alongside former Meta researchers Guillaume Lample and Timotheé Lacroix. Best known for its “Le Chat” chatbot, Mistral sits at the center of Europe’s ambition to build sovereign A.I. independent of Silicon Valley....

....MUCH MORE 

Our last post on Mistral was January 27's "French AI firm Mistral predicts revenue of €1 billion in 2026".

California Gasoline Prices Jump 40 Cents Per Gallon, Flirting With $5.00

From AutoBlog, February 17:

Gas prices in California are flirting with $5/gallon today – here’s why
West Coast gas is often expensive, but California is getting hit hard today 

• California gas averages $4.54 per gallon, much higher than the $2.94 national average.
• Refinery shutdowns and early transition to expensive summer-blend gasoline drive price spikes.
• Urban stations, especially in Los Angeles and San Francisco, report nearly $5 per gallon prices.

While much of the country is enjoying sub-$3.00-per-gallon gas prices, California is not. Currently, the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded is around $2.94, but in California, drivers are paying a statewide average of $4.54. This massive delta isn’t just a rounding error; a 40-cent surge hit California in the last two weeks, leaving commuters statewide wondering when the bleeding will stop.

The current spike is a perfect storm of infrastructure fatigue and regulatory timing. A significant reduction in refining capacity, as major players like Phillips 66 and Valero begin to wind down or idle their West Coast operations, is brutal and effectively chokes the supply line. The West Coast is paying a “premium” that feels more like a penalty right now – here’s what’s going on.

The Great Refinery Shutdown 
The recent closure of the Phillips 66 Los Angeles refinery complex in late 2025 and the early idling of Valero’s Benicia facility have collectively wiped out nearly 18% of the state’s refining capacity. Because California requires a specific blend of gasoline to meet its stringent air quality standards, it can’t easily import fuel from other states when local production hits a snag.

This lack of redundancy means that any hiccup in the system results in an immediate, painful price hike at the pump. Petroleum experts warn that the state is reaching a breaking point as it transitions to a greener future without the infrastructure to support the remaining internal combustion fleet. For now, the “supply” side of the supply-and-demand equation is increasingly thin, which is a primary driver behind the current $4.50 floor we’re seeing across the state....

....MUCH MORE 

 How it got to this point:

February 5 -  "California gas prices expected to soar as Valero shutdown worsens oil crisis" (VLO)
A slow motion but inexorable affordability disaster akin to what Germany did to their electricity market, mandate change without building what you want people to change to....

Embedded backlinks to October 2024 including the instant classic:

August 2025 - Facing Possible Economic Collapse, California's Governor Newsom Backtracks On Oil Industry Attacks

He says he's not backtracking, just advancing in a new direction:

“That's not rolling back anything. That's actually marching forward in a way that is thoughtful and considered..."

—Governor Gavin Newsom via KCRA-3 Television, Sacramento, July 4, 2025

GE Vernova - Hitachi Is A Leading Contender To Supply Small Modular Reactors To Duke Energy (GEV)

Speaking of Duke and their infrastructure buildout.*

From Wilmington North Carolina's StarNews, February 16:

Duke eyes new nuclear plant in NC; Wilmington company could play a role
Duke Energy is exploring building a new nuclear facility in Stokes County using small modular reactors. A local company's technology could be key to this plan. 

• Duke Energy is exploring building a new nuclear facility in Stokes County to meet North Carolina's growing power demands.
• The proposed plant would use small modular reactors (SMRs) instead of traditional large-scale ones.
• A Wilmington-based company, GE Vernova Hitachi, is a leading contender to provide the SMR technology for the project.

Duke Energy says it needs to add a lot of additional power generation to its energy portfolio in the coming years to meet future demand driven by North Carolina's population growth and success in attracting new businesses.

A Wilmington-based company could help the utility giant meet that goal.

Duke is exploring the potential of building a new nuclear facility at a site in the Piedmont near the Belews Creek Steam Station in Stokes County.

But the plant wouldn't be one of the large nuclear reactors like the Brunswick Nuclear Plant near Southport. Instead, it would consist of several smaller reactors known as a small modular reactor....

....MUCH MORE 

Earlier today: 

Electric Utilities Are Spending A LOT Of Money On Infrastructure (GEV; PWR; PRY:milan) 

"Canadian Housing Market Faces Years-Long Price Decline, BMO Economist Warns"

Again we ask: Where did all the drug money go?*

From Canada's The Deep Dive, January 20:

A prolonged real estate downturn will drag Canadian home prices lower throughout 2026, according to Bank of Montreal‘s senior economist who accurately predicted the market’s current trajectory years ago. 

BMO senior economist Robert Kavcic forecasts a “long and slow grind” toward affordability, warning buyers and sellers against expecting any near-term recovery.

Canada’s national benchmark home price dropped 4% year-over-year in December, extending losses to 18.6% from the early 2022 peak. The Greater Toronto Area showed detached homes selling for 8% less than the previous year in November, with condo prices down 3.8% over the same period.

Kavcic warned investors in 2022 that unwinding the market’s speculative excess would require years, not quarters. His prediction came as real estate speculation surged and interest rates fell below inflation.

Market fundamentals have shifted dramatically since then. Central bank policymakers delivered seven consecutive rate cuts from June 2024 through March 2025, bringing the benchmark rate into neutral territory. Ottawa has curtailed immigration flows. Investor activity has virtually disappeared.

Annual home sales volumes fell 1.9% in 2025, marking the third-weakest year of the past decade, according to BMO’s monthly housing monitor.

“Incomes still need to catch up and that takes time,” Kavcic said.

Regional performance varies sharply. Southern Ontario struggles most severely, particularly in new condo sales where investor absence has dried up activity. Vancouver faces elevated inventories and buyer’s market conditions, with both condo and detached prices down roughly 5% year-over-year.

Markets in Quebec and Atlantic Canada remain tight. Quebec City led national gains with prices jumping 17% annually, while Montreal rose 5.8% and Moncton increased 4.7%.

Calgary has cooled after strong early-2025 performance, with sales down 14.8% from the previous year and prices declining 3.4%.

Developers continue building smaller condo units even as buyers seek larger single-family homes, creating an oversupply that threatens further condo price erosion. Pre-construction buyers who committed to purchases years ago now confront mortgage rates near 4%—more than double the 1.75% they expected. Many cannot afford to close or sell profitably, forcing them to become landlords in a weakening rental market....

....MUCH MORE
*Previously:

April 2024 - "Amid Canada’s Huge Immigration Surge, Population Growth Hits 3.2%, Fuels 10% Rent Inflation, even as Home Prices Drop"  

August 2025 - Canadian Condo Crash

I wonder where all the drug money went? Canada used to be swimming in the stuff, from the B.C. bud crowd in Vancouver to the Fentanyl cowboys across the plains to Toronto to the old skool Mafias in Ottawa and Montreal. See for example "The Montreal Mafia Murders: Blood, Gore, Cannolis, and Hockey Bags" or at Sky News: "Mafia in Canada: How the ’Ndrangheta built a Toronto empire". 

September 2025 -  Meanwhile In Canada: "No One Wants to Buy a Condo"

Electric Utilities Are Spending A LOT Of Money On Infrastructure (GEV; PWR; PRY:milan)

Two From Utility Dive. First up, February 13:

Transmission drives Exelon’s capital spending plan to $41.3B 

Exelon has a “line of sight” on $12 billion to $17 billion of transmission buildout over the next 10 years that isn’t included in its current capital plan, a company official said. 

Exelon expects transmission investments will be a key driver for its capital spending in the coming years, company officials said during a fourth-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday.

At the same time, Exelon continues to seek a pathway for deregulated utilities to help supply new generation in the PJM Interconnection, Calvin Butler, Exelon president and CEO, said.

“We firmly believe it’s going to require an all-of-the-above strategy that includes utility-generated, demand side and merchant solutions,” he said....

....MUCH MORE 

And February 12:

At $103B, Duke claims largest spending plan of any regulated US utility 

The company is already deploying more than $1 billion in capital every month, CEO Harry Sideris said. Its North Carolina utility has a rate case pending.

Duke Energy has added another $16 billion dollars to its five-year capital plan, which at a current total of $103 billion is now the largest spending plan on file at any regulated U.S. utility, company officials said during a Tuesday morning earnings call.

The company is already spending more than a billion dollars per month in order to keep up with demand and it expects the rate of growth to accelerate in 2027 and 2028, when many new data centers are expected to connect to the grid, Duke Energy President and CEO Harry Sideris said.

Duke’s electric utilities serve 8.7 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. Regulators in South Carolina recently approved its rate increases in that state. Its rate case in North Carolina, where it is also seeking increases, is pending. The parent company is pursuing a merger of its Carolinas utilities. 

Duke Energy has signed 1.5 GW in new data center customers since last November, bringing the company’s running total of data center service agreements to 4.5 GW. The company’s data center deals pipeline of potential customers has topped 9 GW, according to executive vice president and CFO Brian Savoy....

....MUCH MORE 

The symbols in are headline are Prysmian S.p.A. the world's premier manufacturer of electrical cables; Quanta Services, America's largest contractor specializing in laying (or stringing) that cable and GE Vernova which will generate electricity pretty much any way you want: nuclear; natural gas; wind, and will sell you all the electrical transformers you need to get that electricity to the end user. Along with Cameco (CCJ) uranium miner and 49% owner of Westinghouse nuclear they comprise a hyper-concentrated mini-portfolio.

"The world’s most common vegetable is enjoying a great year"

Probably not so great for the growers but they'll adjust.

Either voluntarily or through bankruptcy. That's how commodities markets work.

From The Economist, February 16:

Culture | Playing the tuber
Like chips and pancakes? Lucky you 

THEy are calling it the Kartoffel-Flut: the potato flood. Germany, the largest producer of spuds in the European Union, is enjoying the biggest harvest in a generation, owing to optimal growing conditions and increased tuber cultivation. Last year’s yield was 17% higher than the long-term average. Belgium, France and the Netherlands have also had a bounty.

In fact, there are so many potatoes—one farm near Leipzig had a surplus of 4,000 tonnes—that they are being given away. Some 200 distribution points have been set up across Berlin. Gasthaus Mutter Hoppe, a restaurant, had a tonne of taters to dish out; a waitress says they “ran out within days”. The Berliner Tafel, a food bank, took 22 tonnes. Schools, homeless shelters and even the zoo have stocked up.

If you were to have an abundance of any crop, you would pick the potato. Not only does it store well, but it is filling and calorie-dense relative to other vegetables. It also lends itself to an extraordinary variety of meals. Germans are making potato dumplings and pancakes. The organisers of the giveaway have launched a recipe challenge to inspire Kartoffel cooks, sharing tips for soups, salads and plenty more. As Sam memorably says in “The Lord of the Rings”, you can “boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew!”....

....MORE 

You can order up some Pommes Duchesse, just be sure to have a defibrillator nearby. 

Possibly also of interest:
"How Antoine Augustin Parmentier Tricked The World Into Loving Potatoes"

Infrastructure: "Overhauling Air Traffic Control Involves 5,000 Locations And 600 Radar Systems..."

We are usually reluctant to link to the Epoch Times because not only are they anti-Chinese government, which is fine, you can be pro or anti anything you want but because they have given their big platform to a guy named Gordon Chang who has been predicting China's fall since the year 2000. He's been just plain wrong and the Epoch Times (along with the WSJ, NYT and many others) has allowed him to keep making the pitch for going-on three decades.

Anyhoo, here's the ET via ZeroHedge with an interesting piece of reporting, January 11:

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

The federal government is embarking on what Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has called “the most important infrastructure project that we’ve had in this country for decades.” It is attempting to modernize and upgrade the nation’s entire air traffic control system within a timeline of roughly three- and-a-half to four years.

Multiple aviation experts, ranging from former pilots and controllers to professors and an aviation lawyer, say the changes are needed and long overdue.

The entire project is projected to cost at least $32.5 billion, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), with the initial $12.5 billion downpayment funded by President Donald Trump’s spending bill in July 2025. Duffy has asked Congress for an additional $20 billion to complete the project by the end of the president’s term.

This is what the FAA has said it plans to do in this multi-year modernization project, which portions of the project experts say are most critical, some of the obstacles the federal government might face, and background on the company chosen to lead the endeavor.

What to Expect
The FAA’s plan to “deliver Americans a state-of-the-art air traffic control system” will involve replacing telecommunication lines, radar systems, software, hardware, and other core U.S. aviation infrastructure.

The agency said it will replace copper lines with fiber optics—a project that Duffy recently said is already more than 30 percent complete—and will swap outdated communication hardware with wireless and satellite technology.

These changes will be made at nearly 5,000 locations, alongside implementing more than 25,000 new radios and 462 new digital voice switches, according to an FAA fact sheet.

The agency said more than 600 radar systems that “have gone past their life cycle” will be replaced. Some U.S. radar systems, particularly ground-based radar, date back to between the 1940s and the 1970s.

“The primary radar system—that goes back to World War II, and that’s still in use. And that’s basically detecting that there is something in the air. You can’t always tell what it is,” said Margaret Wallace, a former military air traffic controller and an assistant professor of aviation management at Florida Institute of Technology.

In the decades since World War II, the FAA has “added layers of technology … and if a lower level has an issue, then that’s going to create issues in all the other layers of technology,” Wallace told The Epoch Times.

Additionally, the FAA is increasing the number of airports that deploy the “Surface Awareness Initiative” (SAI). SAI is a ground-based monitoring system that allows air traffic controllers to see all aircraft traversing runways, taxiways, and other surface movement areas at airports.

As of March 2025, SAI was operational at 18 airports. The FAA aimed to install it at 50 airports by the end of 2025 and a total of 200 airports overall. An FAA spokesman told The Epoch Times on Jan. 6 that the system has now been installed at 52 air traffic control towers.

Modernizing air traffic control will also involve building a new consolidated air route traffic control center for the first time in six decades and replacing multiple control towers and one Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility.

TRACON facilities manage air traffic for several airports in specific regions, such as the New York City or Tampa metropolitan areas....

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Endowments/Portfolios: "The Ivies Are Having Second Thoughts About Investing in Private Equity"

 From Financial News London, February 15:

A crowded field and subpar returns have frustrated America’s wealthiest universities, some of private-capital firms’ most-loyal clients 

Private equity is on academic probation.

Princeton University is lowering expectations for its endowment’s returns because its private-capital investments have disappointed. Yale trimmed its portfolio of leveraged buyouts for the first time in a decade. Harvard says cashing out of some private-market investments early is now part of a long-term strategy.

Private equity has counted America’s wealthiest universities among its largest and most-loyal clients since the industry’s formative years. But the market for private-company investments has turned more crowded, and returns now struggle to match broader stock-market benchmarks such as the S&P 500.

University endowments grew to lean on the once-juicy returns of private equity to cover a larger slice of their overall budget. That strategy faltered when the long lockup investments returned an annualized 7.4% in the three years ended June 30, according to Cambridge Associates—much of it paper gains. Over that same period, the S&P 500 rose 19.7% a year.

It was a terrible time for the Ivy League’s golden goose to stop laying eggs. The Trump administration’s decision to revoke federal funding rippled through their campuses, forcing cuts on research projects and leaving schools scrambling. Settlements and court orders have since restored much of that money. But beginning next fiscal year, some of the richest schools expect to pay hundreds of millions of dollars annually in additional taxes on endowment income.

“They are looking at their underperforming private-equity portfolios, which for 30 years were supposedly the gold standard, and they’re worried,” said Charles Skorina, a recruiter in university investment management.... 

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Also at fnLondon, BigLaw Feb. 12:

Kirkland & Ellis scraps 24-hour concierge service

Oddly Satisfying Architecture

From Dezeen, February 14:

Ten examples of oddly satisfying architecture

Tired of doomscrolling? Why not take a five-minute break to browse through this roundup of strangely pleasing architecture.

 

The Shanghai Grand Opera House by Snøhetta is nearing completion

 

Syn Architects tops wedding chapel in China with illuminated "moon" 

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"Fei-Fei Li and Andrej Karpathy Back a New A.I. Use Case: Simulating Human Behavior"

From Observer, February 13:

Backed by Fei-Fei Li and Andrej Karpathy, Simile aims to model how real people think at scale. 

Every three months, public companies brace for analyst questions during quarterly earnings calls. But what if firms could predict these queries in advance and rehearse their responses? That’s one of the capabilities touted by Simile, a new A.I. startup spun out of Stanford and backed by acclaimed researcher Fei-Fei Li and OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy. 

Simile emerged from stealth yesterday (Feb. 12) with $100 million in funding from a round led by Index Ventures. Alongside Li and Karpathy, the startup—which hasn’t disclosed its valuation—also counts investors including Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo and Scott Belsky, a partner at A24 Films.

Li and Karpathy both have close ties to Simile’s founding team, which includes Stanford researchers Joon Park, Percy Liang and Michael Bernstein. Li is the co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered A.I. Institute and advised Karpathy during his Ph.D. study at the university. She is widely known for foundational work such as ImageNet, a large-scale image database that helped drive major breakthroughs in computer vision. Karpathy and Bernstein also contributed to that project....

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"Okay, when the analyst says 'Great quarter', you say..." 

"Altman and Pichai among tech CEOs heading to India for major AI summit in a key market"

From CNBC, February 15:

• India will host the AI Impact Summit this week in New Delhi.
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai are all expected to attend.
• India presents a lucrative market of young, tech-forward consumers and a huge pool of talent which could be key to the continued development of AI. 

Big technology executives descend on India this week for an AI summit in New Delhi as the world’s largest companies aim to expand their presence in what is seen as a critical growth market.

India this week will host the AI Impact Summit, the latest in a series of government-hosted events focused on artificial intelligence that have taken place in the U.K., South Korea and France.

Among the key attendees are OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Anthropic boss Dario Amodei and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis are also slated to be there. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who was earlier expected to attend, reportedly withdrew on Saturday due to “unforeseen circumstances.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will roll out of the red carpet which tech CEOs will happily walk down as the country presents a lucrative market of young, tech-forward consumers and a huge pool of talent which could be key to continued development of AI.

“The summit ... is a huge validation of the potential of the market. Everyone’s coming in because they realize that this is the place to be in and India just cannot be ignored,” Lalit Ahuja, CEO of ANSR, a company that helps businesses run offshore teams in India.

The AI Impact Summit also comes amid a reset in relations between India and the U.S. as the two nations push toward a trade deal.

India strives to be a major tech hub
Modi’s government has made its intentions clear in the last few years — it wants India to be one of the world’s tech superpowers. India has approved $18 billion worth of semiconductor projects as it looks to build a domestic supply chain.

The government has pushed major companies, including Apple, to manufacture more of its goods in India.

Venture capital investors are betting on India’s startups while the country’s stock exchanges are seeing a surge in initial public offerings....

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KUNG HEI FAT CHOY—CLSA Feng Shui Index 2026: Year of the Fire Horse

From CLSA:

Welcome to the action-packed Year of the Fire Horse! Following tradition, we temporarily step away from investment research to present our annual tongue-in-cheek Feng Shui guide for your entertainment. Gracing this year’s cover is the thrilling spectacle of Olympic showjumping, a sport of split-second changes in speed, direction and strategy that mirrors the fiery energy of the Horse year. The phrase shì rú bēn mă 勢如奔馬 - charging forward like a galloping horse - captures the essence of 2026 beautifully. Bold moves, rapid momentum and sharp turns define the energetic waves we expect to ride in the year ahead....

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  Leading by a horse’s head

With the Fire Horse being predictably unpredictable, we have locked ourselves into a safe, fireproof and soundproof room with all of our prognostic tools to divine the relative movements of our favourite Earth Rooster, the Hang Seng Index....

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So You Want To Be An Algorithmic Trader

Lifted in toto from efinancialcareers, February 16:

The quiet intensity of algorithmic trading jobs in finance 

When people think of intense jobs in finance, they tend to imagine the 120-hour weeks worked by investment bankers. Algorithmic trading jobs slip under the radar in this regard, but can be just as exacting.

Andrew Courtney, formerly head of international ETF trading at Susquehanna International Group (SIG), recently appeared on a podcast to discuss quant trading careers. He said that quant traders typically spend "all day" looking at "multiple monitors covered with numbers, signals, flashing lights... your eyes are flittering across those screens trying to extract meaning and signal from those patterns." Courtney's experience isn't unique to SIG; at Jane Street, tools are optimized for individual traders to the point where UI elements can be as little as six pixels tall. 

The role requires such focus and intensity that Courtney said he'd "never had a lunch break in [his] career." The trade-off is that traders generally work around the times that markets are open, but that doesn't mean the work is inherently safer than a banker working until 4am. Around the time that Bank of America associate Leo Lukenas infamously died of heart complications, Adnan Deumic, an algorithmic trader at the bank, also sadly passed. While Lukenas was allegedly working 120-hour weeks in its investment bank, Deumic was working half that. The New York Post reported at the time, however, that the work was incredibly intense and Deumic didn't have time to leave his desk for a coffee.

A career in quant finance can also have long-term (but not necessarily bad) psychological effects. Courtney said that "thinking in bets is [such] a part of the culture at SIG that I can't not do it." He said that, whenever faced with uncertainty, he will "think of everything as a bet... I kind of don't understand how you talk to normal people, and they don't do that." 

efinancial careers front page.  

If interested see also: 

"George Washington Fought for America’s Independence—and Its Booze Industry"

 A repost from 2025.

From Barron's, February 22:

George Washington ran one of the country’s largest distilleries.
A whiskey barrel from the George Washington Distillery.
- Courtesy Mount Vernon

George Washington wasn’t just the father of his country. He also helped give birth to its liquor industry.

Washington’s distillery at Mount Vernon, Va., was one of America’s largest, producing more than 10,000 gallons of rye and corn whiskey in 1799. He sold it by the barrel as part of a postpresidency retirement scheme.

“Two hundred gallons of Whiskey will be ready,” Washington wrote to a nephew, “and the sooner it is taken the better, as the demand for this article (in these parts) is brisk.”

Demand for alcohol was brisk throughout the young nation, and it remains so today—even if our annual average consumption of around 2.3 gallons of absolute alcohol pales next to the 7.1 gallons quaffed in 1830.

We drink less for many reasons, among them ready access to safe drinking water. But age-old concerns about alcohol’s dangers, to both body and soul, followed drinking to the New World. Modern science has made the risks clear, most recently in a report from the Surgeon General that ties alcohol consumption to cancer.

This has taken a toll on U.S. liquor sales, which fell 1% last year to $112 billion, punishing the shares of brewers, distillers, and vintners. More people than ever express concern about drinking’s health hazards.

Yet, there are no calls for renewing prohibition. From New Year’s bubbly to beers at the ballgame and rum drinks at the beach, liquor remains central to our celebrations.

As ever in America, it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere.

“By 1770, Americans consumed alcohol, mostly in the form of rum and cider, routinely with every meal,” wrote the historian W.J. Rorabaugh, author of The Alcoholic Republic. “Many people began the day with an ‘eye opener’ and closed it with a nightcap.”

During the Colonial period, most alcohol was imported. Washington was partial to Madeira wine and English porter. After the Revolution, America became a nation of small brewers and distillers; cultivating the grape proved more challenging.

Alcohol became such big business that, in 1794, the government’s attempt to tax it triggered a Whiskey Rebellion by Pennsylvania farmers.

Washington rode at the head of 13,000 federal troops to put down the rebellion, enforcing the government’s right to collect taxes. There were personal ramifications: In 1798, Washington paid a tax of $332 on 616 gallons produced at Mount Vernon....

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Milestones: "Ford Falls Behind China’s BYD in Global Sales For the First Time"

From Bloomberg, February 10:

Ford Motor Co. lost out to BYD Co. in global vehicle sales for the first time last year as the Chinese manufacturer continued its climb up the rankings of the world’s largest automakers.

Ford’s wholesales dropped almost 2% last year to just shy of 4.4 million, short of the 4.6 million vehicle sales BYD reported in January. The figure the US automaker disclosed Tuesday confirms BYD has moved up to No. 6 in the global sales ranks, one spot ahead of Ford.

While Ford’s US sales rose last year, it has lost ground in Europe and particularly China, where domestic manufacturers like BYD, Xiaomi Corp. and Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. have grabbed market share from foreign automakers with affordable, tech-laden EVs. 

Ford has weathered a difficult EV transition, announcing $19.5 billion in charges to overhaul its strategy. 

BYD has also made inroads into markets in Europe, South America and Asia, with exports reaching 1.05 million in 2025. It aims to increase that to 1.3 million this year....

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"Topology of 'China AI'"

From the Concurrent substack, September 11, 2025:

On circles, misconceptions, deep infrastructure, founder archetypes, state's role, memes, AGI. A conversation about the topology of China’s AI world for you.  

H is an AI engineer at one of China's largest tech companies, leading an open-source project. A few weeks ago, I met him in Shenzhen during a self-organized "China AI/tech tour" with several US tech writers.1 After peppering him with questions—the most obvious one being "What's Silicon Valley's biggest misunderstanding about China's AI?"—I discovered someone so thoughtful and genuinely bilingual.

His daily routine reveals the paradox: wake up, doomscroll X, debate on LessWrong, drive his NIO to work, then use English more heavily than when he studied in California. He loves watching Westworld and treats Gödel, Escher, Bach as AI scripture. Apart from geography, H could be any engineer at Anthropic or Google. He represents the global open-source AI community: following identical cultural patterns, reading the same viral posts, grappling with the same technical problems, laughing at the same memes. He just happens to work in China.

"'Chinese AI' is merely a geopolitical label," H said. "All LLMs fundamentally compress and regenerate collected data." Yet despite this universalist perspective, he articulately mapped the profound topological differences between Chinese and American AI ecosystems while understanding the China model's essence with surgical precision....

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Books: Nordic Noir Has Spawned A New Sub-Genre: Arctic Noir (plus Russian oil)

Moving on from AI-generated romance novels... 

From High North News, January 30:

Greenland Is Shaping the Next Crime Fiction Genre, Says Professor Annemette Hejlsted 

Nuuk, Greenland: The dark, gloomy, and cold surroundings of the North have provided fertile ground for the Nordic Noir genre in both literature and film. In recent years, a subgenre has emerged, Arctic Noir, featuring both the natural and societal characteristics of the Far North, says Professor Annemette Hejlsted.

The cold nights, the long dark days, and the melancholic ambience of the Nordic region have been made world-famous by countless Scandinavian writers and producers in the crime genre, Nordic Noir.

Like other crime genres, Nordic Noir revolves around a crime, usually a murder, and its investigator. The investigator is often attempting a cumbersome balancing act between the heavy burden of the work and their personal demons. Often, the investigator is female and morally complex.

At the same time, the genre sheds light on social issues in the North, revealing cracks in the picture-perfect Nordic social democracies. 

Now, a new subgenre is emerging under the name Arctic Noir, characterized by an even harsher climate and bleaker environment, which first developed in Greenland. But it's not just about the environment, says researcher Annemette Hejlsted at Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland.

"It allows the writer to play with new elements, such as how everyone knows each other in small communities. In addition, it often includes Indigenous culture, which is unique and has kind of developed on the outskirts of the dominant Western culture."

She says this is one of the ways Arctic Noir differs from Nordic Noir: the portrayal of the clash between traditional and modern cultures and knowledge, which is so often found in the Arctic.

"Arctic Noir provides a new setting, not just in terms of climate, but also in the uniqueness of Indigenous cultures that have developed across mainstream cultures," says Hejlsted.

"Greenlandic culture is naturally similar to a lot of other cultures. We study at the university, go to the swimming pool, and drink coffee at cafes. Yet, there is another unique element present here."

 

True Detective Night Country provided a global audience with a peak into Arctic Noir.

Michele K. Short/HBO

Not necessarily meant for a local audience
In 2024, HBO's acclaimed True Detective's fourth season was set in Alaska, showcasing the global appeal of the Polar Night and the allure and mystique of Indigenous knowledge and ways of living....

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Also, the article at High North News that I was originally going for, February 13:

Russia announces new Arctic oil discovery

Russian energy major Gazprom Neft has discovered a new oil field on the Yamal Peninsula that is the largest discovered in the region in three decades, according to a company release....

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Now, if we can get the AI to write a Russian - Norwegian - Sami mashup of the two stories... 

A.I. Use Case: Using Chatbots To Write Romance Novels

From the New York Times, February 8:

The New Fabio Is Claude
The romance industry, always at the vanguard of technological change, is rapidly adapting to A.I. Not everyone is on board.

Last February, the writer Coral Hart launched an experiment. She started using artificial intelligence programs to quickly churn out romance novels.

Over the next eight months, she created 21 different pen names and published dozens of novels. In the process, she discovered the limitations of using chatbots to write about sex and love.

Some programs refused to write explicit content, which violated their policies. Others, like Grok and NovelAI, produced graphic sex scenes, but the consummation often lacked emotional nuance, and felt rushed and mechanical. Claude delivered the most elegant prose, but was terrible at sexy banter.

“You are going to get hammering hearts and thumping chests and stupid stuff,” said Ms. Hart, who lives in Cape Town in South Africa. “At the end of every sex scene, everyone will end up tangled in the sheets.”

Chatbots were also bad at building sexual tension — the slow-burn, will-they-or-won’t-they plotlines that romance readers crave. When told to craft a love scene, the bots usually jumped straight to the obvious narrative climax.

Ms. Hart found Anthropic’s chatbot to be the most versatile, and developed ways around Claude’s prudishness. Among her techniques: feeding Claude very specific instructions and a list of kinks, and stressing that sex was not gratuitous, but crucial to the plot.

A longtime romance novelist who has been published by Harlequin and Mills & Boon, Ms. Hart was always a fast writer. Working on her own, she released 10 to 12 books a year under five pen names, on top of ghostwriting. But with the help of A.I., Ms. Hart can publish books at an astonishing rate. Last year, she produced more than 200 romance novels in a range of subgenres, from dark mafia romances to sweet teen stories, and self-published them on Amazon. None were huge blockbusters, but collectively, they sold around 50,000 copies, earning Ms. Hart six figures. 

While we spoke over Zoom, an A.I. program she was running ingested her prompts and outline and produced a full novel, about a rancher who falls for a city girl running away from her past. It took about 45 minutes.

Ms. Hart has become an A.I. evangelist. Through her author-coaching business, Plot Prose, she’s taught more than 1,600 people how to produce a novel with artificial intelligence, she said. She’s rolling out her proprietary A.I. writing program, which can generate a book based on an outline in less than an hour, and costs between $80 and $250 a month.

But when it comes to her current pen names, Ms. Hart doesn’t disclose her use of A.I., because there’s still a strong stigma around the technology, she said. Coral Hart is one of her early, now retired pseudonyms, and it’s the name she uses to teach A.I.-assisted writing; she requested anonymity because she still uses her real name for some publishing and coaching projects. She fears that revealing her A.I. use would damage her business for that work.

But she predicts attitudes will soon change, and is adding three new pen names that will be openly A.I.-assisted, she said.

The way Ms. Hart sees it, romance writers must either embrace artificial intelligence, or get left behind.
“If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?” she said.

Romance at the Vanguard
Whenever the publishing industry is rocked by a technological shift, it usually hits romance first. Romance writers are prolific and their readers are voracious, so they’ve been early adopters of e-book subscription services, self-publishing, social media networking and online serial releases.

Romance is also the publishing industry’s best-selling genre. It accounts for more than 20 percent of all adult fiction print sales, according to Circana BookScan, and has continued to grow in recent years even as overall adult fiction sales have stagnated....

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Wrapping Up Our St. Valentine's Weekend: Italy's Torre Sant'Andrea, the "Love Arch", Has Collapsed

First up, from the Daily Mail, February 15:

Italy's famous 'love arch' collapses on Valentine's Day as storm lashes the country 

Italy's famous 'love arch' collapsed overnight on Valentine's Day as storms continue to rip through the country.

The Torre Sant'Andrea in Puglia was a rock formation in the sea that had become a popular tourist destination, attracting couples seeking eternal love.

According to local legend, pairs who kissed underneath the rock would have a love that lasted forever.

However, the iconic arch collapsed during storms on Saturday night, following days of high winds and heavy rain.

Pictures showed the bridge of rock between connecting the two stacks in the sea had eroded away....

 

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And from The Telegraph, February 15:

Italy’s ‘love arch’ collapses on Valentine’s Day
Loss of storm-hit Torre Sant’Andrea ‘is a devastating blow to the heart’ 

 

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Earlier this weekend: 

• Be My Macabre Valentine
• "Think your breakup was bad? Check out the Museum of Broken Relationships"
• Audit Professionals In Love: "Forget Flowers, KPMG Wants You to Give Your Spouse the Gift of Compliance on Valentine’s Day"
• Love And Fraud