Entertained

Chuck Schumer has no killer instinct at all. He wouldn’t step on a bug in the kitchen; he’d just send it a stern note and try to reach an understanding with it. He has what you might call a ‘poodle instinct.’ He barks occasionally, but he won’t protect you against anything.

Walmart and Kroger are quietly rolling out an internal store technology across America that could either modernize retail or bankrupt the middle-class family budget. Starting across thousands of locations heading into 2027, traditional paper price tags are being ripped off grocery shelves and replaced with cloud-connected digital screens. Raise the price of bottled water by 20 percent the second the afternoon temperature hits 90 degrees. Surge the cost of ground beef, milk, and sandwich bread between 5 PM and 6 PM when exhausted commuters are rushing home from work. Drop prices at 10 AM on a Tuesday, then hike them right back up the minute the after-school crowd walks through the sliding doors. Every price change happens wirelessly in seconds from a central corporate dashboard. No store employee has to touch a single shelf. Walmart has already signed a massive deployment deal with VusionGroup to wire 2,300 American supercenters with EdgeSense digital shelf rails by 2027. Kroger is expanding its own Microsoft-backed system called EDGE across hundreds of supermarkets. Over 60 million digital price tags are already blinking on US grocery aisles right now. This is not supply chain inflation. This is Uber-style surge pricing built directly into the shelves where Americans buy baby formula, eggs, and medicine. Last week I sat down for coffee with a former retail pricing director who spent 14 years building supermarket margin algorithms before leaving the industry. What he shared over the table completely changed how I look at a grocery aisle. "Retailers just turned static shelves into live stock tickers. The question is not whether grocery chains will use instant price changes, because they already spent billions installing the hardware. The question is how much extra money a family of four will lose every week simply because both parents work until 5 PM and cannot shop during off-peak hours." Here is how the digital grocery pricing system actually works, how it tracks you in the aisle, and the exact phone settings and checkout playbook you need to beat it.

wasn't this guy talking about dropping fentanyl piss on dissenting press last year?

The third option (maintaining the status quo of neither peace nor war) appears, at least on the surface, to be the most attractive alternative. It spares President Trump the need to accept an agreement with Iran that would require concessions not only from Tehran but also from the president himself. Such an agreement would serve as clear evidence of the failure to achieve the war’s main objectives or even to return to the status quo ante regarding the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, this option avoids, at least for now, another round of military confrontation with Iran, whose prospects of improving the strategic landscape are highly questionable. It seems more likely that following such a round, whose consequences would probably be even more devastating than those of the previous one, both for Iran and for its neighbors and the global economy, the parties would find themselves back at the same impasse. Another military campaign would therefore fail to resolve the fundamental challenges, including the survival of the Iranian regime, its nuclear program, and Iran’s ability to threaten maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Moreover, there is a significant risk that, assuming the Iranian regime survives another round of fighting (as seems likely), the credibility of the military option against Iran will be substantially undermined, at least for the foreseeable future. From the Iranian leadership’s perspective, such a confrontation, which would likely include attacks on strategic infrastructure, would represent the realization of its worst-case scenario. If the regime manages to survive it, the ability to deter Tehran in the future would be significantly weakened. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that the third option—maintaining economic pressure over an extended period—will provide a way out of the deadlock. At this stage, there is no indication that the Islamic Republic is on the verge of economic collapse, let alone political collapse. Iran continues to rebuild its strategic capabilities, its nuclear capabilities remain intact, calls for a revision of its nuclear doctrine are growing in Tehran, and Iran shows no willingness to compromise on its core demands vis-à-vis the U.S. It is reasonable to assess that if economic pressure continues, it is unlikely to lead Iran to decide, several months from now, to make concessions. On the contrary, it may well push Tehran toward further escalation, and it is far from certain that the ability to act effectively against Iran will improve in the coming months. The bottom line is that while the decision not to decide may be understandable at this stage, it is doubtful that it will eliminate the need, in the near future, for difficult decisions in both Tehran and Washington—one way or another—to break the current impasse.