With both foreign and domestic investors dumping gold (and anything else not nailed down) to fund oil, at its brand sparkling new price of $170 (in Asia), we were wondering how long before the lack of disposable cash hits US debt. We got the answer today at just after 1pm when we got the results of today’s $69 billion 2Year bond auction. In a nutshell, it was terrible.

The auction priced at a high yield of 3.936%, up from 3.455% last month and the highest since May 2025. It also tailed the When Issued by a whopping 1.8bps, the highest tail since March 2023.

The bid to cover was a piss poor 2.440, down sharply from 2.630 and the lowest since May 2024. 

The internals were also ugly, with Indirects taking 59.98%, an improvement from 55.91% in February, but it was the Direct bidders that unexpectedly tumbled from 42.3% to 16.50%, the lowest since March 2025. This left Dealers holding 24.12% of the auction, up sharply from 9.81% and the highest since October 2022. 

Overall, this was a very ugly auction, and the only thing that could have made it catastrophic was if Indirects had also refused to participate. For now they haven’t but at this rate it’s just a matter of time before Indirects go limit down and Dealers are forced to carry the entire auction. 

This isn’t going to help the speculation that Zuckerberg, himself is a robot. I mean, it’s only a joke…right?

Mark Zuckerberg is pushing a future where everyone—inside and outside Meta Platforms—has a personal AI agent. He’s beginning with his own, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

The CEO is building an internal “CEO agent,” still in development, that helps him quickly access information he’d normally get through layers of staff. The goal reflects a broader company shift: speed up work, reduce hierarchy, and compete with lean, AI-first startups.

AI adoption has become central to Meta’s strategy. Zuckerberg recently emphasized this direction, saying, “We’re investing in AI-native tooling so individuals at Meta can get more done,” adding that the company is “elevating individual contributors and flattening teams.” Employees are now expected to use AI regularly, and it even factors into performance reviews.

Across the company, staff are experimenting heavily. Internal forums are full of AI tools and ideas, with some employees describing the environment as similar to Meta’s early “move fast and break things” era—now updated to a more stable, AI-driven version of rapid innovation.

New tools are emerging internally. Personal agents can access files, communicate with coworkers—or even other agents—on a user’s behalf. Another tool, Second Brain, acts like an “AI chief of staff,” helping organize and retrieve project information. There are even spaces where employees’ AI agents interact with each other.

WSJ writes that Meta is also investing externally, acquiring startups like Moltbook and Manus to expand its capabilities.

To support this shift, Meta created a new applied AI engineering group designed to be “AI native from day one,” focused on accelerating development of its AI models. Employees are encouraged to attend frequent AI trainings, hackathons, and build their own tools.

Still, the rapid transformation brings mixed feelings. While some employees find it energizing, others worry about job security—especially after major layoffs in 2022 and 2023 as the company restructured for efficiency.

Meta’s leadership sees this transition as essential. As CFO Susan Li put it, staying competitive means ensuring a company of Meta’s scale can operate just as efficiently as smaller, AI-native firms.

Authored by Jason Nelson via decrypt.co,

In brief

200 protesters marched from Anthropic to OpenAI and xAI offices in San Francisco.

Activists called on AI companies to pause development of new frontier AI models.

Organizer Michael Trazzi previously staged a multi-week hunger strike outside Google DeepMind.

Protesters took to the streets of San Francisco on Saturday, stopping outside the offices of Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI to call for a conditional pause in the development of increasingly powerful artificial intelligence.

According to Stop the AI Race founder and documentarian Michael Trazzi, roughly 200 protesters participated in the demonstration.

Participants included researchers, academics, and members of advocacy groups such as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, PauseAI, QuitGPT, StopAI, and Evitable.

“There are a lot of people who care about this risk from advanced AI systems,” Trazzi told Decrypt. “Having everyone marching together shows people are not isolated in thinking about this by themselves. There are a lot of people who care about this.”

The march began at noon outside Anthropic’s offices, then moved to OpenAI and then to xAI. At each stop, activists and speakers from the participating organizations addressed protesters.

According to Trazzi, the protest aimed to push AI companies to agree to a coordinated pause in building more powerful AI models and create treaties with AI developers in other countries to do the same.

“If China and the U.S. agreed to stop building more dangerous models, they could focus on making the systems better for us, like medical AI,” he said. “Everyone would be better off.”

Stop the AI Race’s proposal calls for companies to stop building new frontier models and shift work toward safety, if other major labs “credibly do the same,” which Trazzi said makes protesting in front of AI labs’ offices more important.

Steady opposition

The protest is the latest in a series of efforts to disrupt AI development.

In March 2023, the Future of Life Institute published an open letter demanding a moratorium on further enhancements to the leading AI tool following the public launch of ChatGPT the year before.

Signers included xAI founder Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen. Since then, the “Pause Giant AI Experiments” open letter has garnered over 33,000 signatures.

In September, Trazzi staged a week-long hunger strike outside Google DeepMind’s London offices, while Guido Reichstadter held a parallel hunger strike outside Anthropic’s San Francisco offices.

Government officials and supporters of continued AI development argue that slowing research in the U.S. could give competitors abroad an advantage.

Last week, the Trump Administration published its AI framework to establish a national standard for laws governing AI development. The White House framed it as a commitment to “winning the AI race.”

“Even if you’re in China or any country in the world, nobody wants systems they cannot control,” Trazzi said. “Because we’re in this race between companies and countries to build the systems as fast as possible, we’re taking shortcuts and cutting corners on safety. There is a race that has no winners. What we have is a system we cannot control, and that’s why it’s called a suicide race.”

But even if AI developers agreed to pause development, verifying it may be easier said than done. Trazzi suggested one way to verify a pause would be to limit the computing power used to train new models.

“If you limit how much compute a company can use to build these systems, then you’re pretty much limiting developing new models,” he said.

Following the San Francisco protest, Trazzi said additional demonstrations could take place in other locations where major AI companies operate.

“We want to show up where the employees are,” he said. “We want to talk to them, and we want them to talk to their leadership and have things moving from inside,” adding that whistleblowers will have some amount of power because “they’re the ones building it.”

OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s requests for comment.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang joined podcaster Lex Fridman for a 2-plus-hour conversation on the future of AI infrastructure, covering everything from chips, racks, and cooling systems to Nvidia’s broader strategy for the next computing era.

Jensen spoke about how computers are evolving from retrieval machines into generative AI factories. The discussion also turned to one of the biggest questions in the AI cycle: whether AGI has already arrived.

Near the two-hour mark of the conversation, Fridman asked Jensen about the “AGI timeline” and whether it is still five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years away, especially given the recent widespread use of agentic AI tools like OpenClaw.

Jensen responded, “I think it’s now. I think we’ve achieved AGI.”

It is worth noting that Jensen has previously stated that the AGI timeline depends on how it is defined.

At the 2023 New York Times DealBook Summit, Jensen defined AGI as software capable of exceeding normal human intelligence at a reasonably competitive level. At the time, he said he expected AGI to arrive within five years.

Fridman’s question about the AGI timeline was based on a very narrower interpretation, and Jensen framed it this way: AI does not need to build anything lasting. It does not need to manage a complex business. It just needs to make a billion dollars.

“You said a billion,” Jensen told Fridman, “and you didn’t say forever.”

Jensen said, for example, that all AI needs to do is create a web service or app that goes viral and is used by a few billion people at fifty cents per user.

He pointed to the dot-com era, when some websites were no more sophisticated than what an AI agent can create today.

So under that narrower interpretation, Jensen believes: “I think we’ve achieved AGI.”

*  *  * ARE YOU PREPARED?

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is moving ahead with the agency’s ambitious push to return astronauts to the moon, unveiling new plans for a lunar base alongside a nuclear-propelled spacecraft intended to pave the way for a future Mars mission.

At an earlier event, The New York Times reported that Isaacman laid out the agency’s three-phase plan: first, expand robotic missions and surface systems; second, build semi-habitable infrastructure for regular astronaut visits; and third, construct permanent infrastructure for a sustained human presence on the moon.

“We are calling today’s event Ignition because it represents the start of a transformative journey for NASA,” Isaacman told an audience of representatives from aerospace companies, international space agency officials, and Congress.

BREAKING: NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announces plans to build a PERMANENT U.S. base on the Moon—the plan rolls out in three phases: rover and tech deployments, semi-habitable infrastructure for astronauts, and ultimately a permanent human presence on the lunar surface.… pic.twitter.com/5wansZv09f

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) March 24, 2026

Isaacman’s top objective is to return astronauts to the moon in a series of missions called Artemis by 2028. At the same time, he outlined plans to launch a nuclear-propelled spacecraft to Mars by the end of 2028.

He said NASA will deploy $20 billion over seven years to ensure America leads the Moon and Mars missions.

“The moon base will not appear overnight,” Isaacman said. “We will invest approximately $20 billion over the next seven years and build it through dozens of missions.”

The announcement comes just ahead of Artemis II, the mission expected to send astronauts around the moon and back for the first time since 1972.

Isaacman also said Artemis missions would accelerate to twice a year after Artemis V in 2028, and NASA is seeking replacements for Boeing’s Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket and Orion capsule. We reported this last week. 

He added that work on the planned Gateway lunar station program has been suspended.

Chinese Special Envoy to the Middle East Zhai Jun has said at a briefing after his ​shuttle-diplomacy trip that included recent stops in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait that the US-Israeli operation against Iran must immediately cease or else a “vicious cycle” toward destabilizing the region and disrupt global trade would persist.

“Should hostilities continue to escalate and the situation deteriorate further, the entire region will be plunged into chaos. The use of force will only lead to a vicious cycle… the war should not have begun in the first place,” Zhai declared.

via AFP

Washington’s latest war of choice in the Middle East has been focus of growing condemnation from Beijing, with Zhai having added: “The one who tied the bell must be the one to untie it.” Or this is another way of saying whatever the US broke it must quickly fix.

Separately, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian reiterated at the start of this week that continued military action risks deepening instability, and reminded Washington that its past wars in the same region “are not far behind us.”

It was only days ago that President Trump called on China and Japan to assist in getting the Hormuz Strait back open, but something which especially China has little incentive to do, as its instead content to watch the US get bogged down in a quagmire amid Tehran’s unexpected resilience under the bombs.

Iran has meanwhile held a phone call with China’s foreign minister, per Bloomberg: “Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday called on all parties in the Iran war to seize every opportunity and window for peace and start peace talks as soon as possible, Xinhua reports. Wang made the appeal in a phone conversation with Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi.”

China has long been a powerful ally of Tehran providing with diplomatic cover, institutional support, military cooperation and an economic lifeline – especially as its major oil buyer; however, China is not expected to go further with any kind of direct military support.

There are claims that it could be, alongside Russia, providing some intelligence support though. If this is the case, there is not much Washington can do about it – also as the White House response to widespread reports of Russian intelligence-sharing has been met with some pretty mild and meager statements out of the White House.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A viral video has revealed that CVS is locking up darker makeup shades behind security devices while lighter ones sit open — because stores secure what thieves steal most, and the data backs it up.

A shopper at CVS captured the scene with lighter skin-tone foundations and concealers displayed freely, no locks and no tags, yet the darker shades were all secured behind anti-theft devices.

This isn’t “racism.” It’s basic loss prevention. Retailers don’t waste money locking up products that don’t walk out the door. They follow the numbers.

American is shopping for makeup at CVS when she notices something strange

She films the makeup isle and shows there are no security devices on the lighter skin shades, but if you go into the darker makeup shades they all have security locks

Stores lockup items stolen the most pic.twitter.com/GWxHzbUpL8

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) March 23, 2026

The wider retail theft crisis makes it crystal clear why. The National Retail Federation’s 2025 Impact of Retail Theft and Violence report shows shoplifting incidents jumped another 19 percent from 2023 to 2024 — on top of a staggering 93 percent surge since 2019.

Retailers reported double-digit increases in both shoplifting and merchandise theft heading into 2026, with aggressive thieves becoming the norm. Losses are projected near $48 billion this year alone.

Stores aren’t profiling customers. They’re protecting their shelves from repeat patterns of theft. And those patterns line up with hard crime statistics.

Nationwide arrest data from 2019 — the most comprehensive recent breakdown available — reveals Black Americans accounted for 26.6 percent of shoplifting arrests while making up just 13 percent of the U.S. population.

In major cities the disparity is even sharper. Vera Institute analysis of Los Angeles jail bookings from 2020-2023 found Black individuals dramatically overrepresented in retail theft charges, including organized retail crime. California statewide data shows the same overrepresentation in shoplifting arrests under $950.

The Vera Institute’s data confirms overrepresentation but frames it through a disparity lens, citing national self-report studies suggesting higher lifetime shoplifting prevalence among Whites. However, arrest/booking data itself is concrete evidence of who gets processed. Black individuals are dramatically overrepresented in retail theft bookings in LA and statewide, especially for organized retail theft charges and shoplifting under $950. This is raw booking stats, not adjusted for self-reported behavior or policing bias claims.

The left screams “systemic racism” whenever stores act on reality. But the stores don’t care about skin color — they care about what disappears. Darker shades get locked because the theft data demands it. Just like liquor, electronics, and designer goods.

There are 332 million people in the United States.

9.09% of Americans shoplift. That’s 30,178,800 people in total.

69.4% of shoplifters are white.

30.2% of shoplifters are black.

(Per FBI Crime Data)

This means that there are 20,944,087 white shoplifters in the US and… pic.twitter.com/0z4EyGVXZG

— Amiri King (@AmiriKing) May 27, 2025

X users cut straight through the noise and called it exactly what it is:

It’s not racism it statistics

— Tyler (@T0neyTw0T0ne) March 23, 2026

So now let me guess that’s racist. Maybe those are the colors that are stolen more. Why is it always a race issue?

— Pac-Man (@Pacman1980_) March 23, 2026

It’s now racist to point out the disparity between crime rates.
The thought crime posse is now fully effective.

— John ?? Nightvision (@JVonSovereign) March 23, 2026

Steal stuff then blame it on racism…?? pic.twitter.com/5COap2E62o

— Based Kenny ? (@_Krypto_Kenny) March 23, 2026

The data shows that otherwise they wouldn’t have done it.

— Kristina Bogdanova (@Kristina_Bogda) March 23, 2026

Not racist ….. just practical.

— Marty (@RiverOregon) March 23, 2026

That’s called following the research ?????

— SW (@Freedom4Dummies) March 23, 2026

Exactly. This is what happens when businesses refuse to play the woke game and simply follow the stats. The same common-sense approach that kept shelves stocked before progressive DAs turned shoplifting into a hobby.

When theft has real consequences again, retailers won’t need to lock half the makeup aisle — because the thieves will be off the streets.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

The fertilizer crisis appears to be worsening just as the Northern Hemisphere planting season, in some areas, is about to begin, with top ammonium nitrate supplier Russia announcing on Tuesday via state media that exports of the critical crop nutrient will be halted. 

Russia’s state-run news agency TASS said Russia will suspend ammonium nitrate exports from March 21 through April 21. The report cited a statement from the Agriculture Ministry.

The temporary restriction is intended to secure domestic fertilizer supplies during the spring planting season. Exports made under intergovernmental agreements are exempt.

Russia is the world’s largest producer of ammonium nitrate. In 2024, the country produced about 12 million tons, roughly 47% of the global output of the plant nutrient. It was also the largest exporter at about 2.7 million tons, around 37% of global export volume and 40% of export value.

Data based on IndexBox’s ammonium nitrate world market overview

Export disruptions of the critical crop nutrient can hit import-dependent buyers hard, especially in markets such as Brazil, Canada, India, Peru, and Ukraine.

Data based on IndexBox’s ammonium nitrate world market overview

Russia’s temporary export comes at the worst possible timing as the Northern Hemisphere planting season begins in some regions. 

The risk now is that, as the Middle East conflict enters its fourth week, a global energy shock is also spreading to fertlizer markets and may only suggest a delayed food price shock later this year. 

“The speed of the move [energy shock] pushed volatility sharply higher, with energy once again becoming the primary transmission channel for geopolitical risk into broader macro pricing,” UBS analyst Claudio Martucci warned clients earlier this month. 

Claudio pointed out, “Agricultural markets reacted more indirectly to the energy shock via higher fertilizer costs, and higher input and biofuel costs lifted soybean oil to two-year highs, while wheat experienced elevated volatility and some profit-taking late in the week despite an otherwise supportive commodity backdrop.”

Last week, former central banker advisor Alexandra Prokopenko warned on X that the near-shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz has triggered an energy shock that risks morphing into a “slower, more consequential story”: fertilizers.

“A near-shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz is triggering a supply shock that will show up in food prices 6–9 months from now,” Prokopenko wrote on X, adding, “Putin’s gains here may be more long-term than simply lining his pockets with petrodollars.”

The Iran war coverage focuses on oil. The slower, more consequential story is fertilizers. A near-shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz is triggering a supply shock that will show up in food prices 6-9 months from now. Putin’s gains here may be more long-term than simply lining his…

— Alexandra Prokopenko (@amenka) March 19, 2026

Bloomberg macro strategist Simon White recently warned, “But food prices are likely to be as troublesome for second-round inflationary effects. Less well known is that the shock to food prices was worse than the oil price shocks of the 1970s, following the Arab oil embargo and the Iranian revolution. Food inflation in the US was already rising before both shocks, and contributed more to headline CPI than energy through almost all of the 70s.”

Prokopenko pointed out, “Consequences already material. Urea up 25-30% since Feb. 28. Gulf producers have declared force majeure on contracts to South America and Asia. ~1 million metric tons of fertilizer physically stranded in the Gulf. Force majeure means contracts are legally severed, not delayed. Buyers must find alternatives now.”

The shock in energy markets has already driven crude prices into triple digits and sent gasoline and diesel prices surging worldwide. In countries heavily dependent on Gulf imports, shortages have already developed… 

And fertilizer disruption could be the next wave. It may not hit all at once, but the effects could show up later this year as lower crop yields, tighter food supplies, and higher prices.

So the real-world hedge right now, ahead of the growing season in the Lower 48, is to start small with a backyard garden. Then build a chicken coop (we advise buying one) and use this global energy shock as an excuse to control your own food supply. 

* * * 

We offer a “Seed Vault” of 39 different varieties of hand-selected non-hybrid, non-GMO, open-pollinated heirloom vegetable seeds. 

Authored by Evgenia Filimianova via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is running to be the next California governor, has seized more than half a million ballots from a November 2025 special election on redistricting, triggering a political and legal confrontation with state officials.

Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside County speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on May 15, 2024. Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

Bianco obtained the ballots with a court-approved warrant in February as part of what he described as an investigation into an alleged discrepancy between ballot logs and official vote totals.

The dispute centers on Riverside County, an inland region east of Los Angeles with roughly 2.5 million residents, where Bianco has twice been elected sheriff.

“Investigations into irregularities must happen so that the public can have full confidence,” he said in a March 22 post on X.

Bianco announced the investigation at a press conference on March 20, saying it stemmed from a complaint by a local citizens group that reviewed public records from the county Registrar of Voters.

Bianco alleged that handwritten intake logs showed 611,428 ballots were received, while 657,322 votes were reported to the state—a gap of roughly 45,896 votes. He rejected the registrar’s explanation that official machine counts showed only a minor deviation attributable to human error.

Calling the probe a “fact-finding mission,” Bianco said investigators plan to physically count ballots and compare the total with certified results.

Clash With Attorney General

County election officials and California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, dispute Bianco’s claims and authority to conduct the probe.

Bonta has characterized the seizure as unprecedented. In letters sent to the sheriff’s office over the past two months, he wrote that the action was “unacceptable” and that it “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.”

Bianco said Bonta sought to halt the probe, arguing that law enforcement officers are not authorized or trained to conduct election recounts. He noted that representatives of the attorney general had asked him to pause the investigation until after March 6 without providing a valid reason.

A judge later ordered that counting resume under the supervision of a special master appointed by the court, Bianco said.

He also suggested urgency because ballots from the 2025 election could be destroyed in May 2026 under state retention rules, although election officials did not comment publicly on that timeline.

Bianco cited a University of California–San Diego study that found that about 40 percent of Californians distrust election systems, calling the figure alarming.

“What does sow mistrust in our system is failing to conduct an investigation—or worse, attempting to stop or interfere with a lawful investigation, to sweep it under the rug so evidence can possibly be destroyed,” he told the press conference.

Bianco is one of two prominent Republicans seeking California’s governorship in a crowded June primary that includes numerous Democrats.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

*  *  * Spring is here, got seeds?

With ‘hard’ US macro data having drifted weaker all year, consensus was expecting only a modest decline in S&P Global’s US Composite index in preliminary March data (that presumably will be affected in some part by the war and its consequences).

The consensus was right, but the picture was mixed with Manufacturing PMI surprising to the upside (52.4 vs 51.5 exp vs 51.6 prior) – highest since Oct 2025.

Services PMI, on the other hand, disappointed, falling to the lowest since April 2025…

Source: Bloomberg

Overall, that combination dragged the Composite PMI to 51.4 – the lowest in 11 months – indicative of GDP rising at an annualized rate of just 1.0%, with a modest 1.3% expansion signalled for the first quarter as a whole.

The survey’s price gauges meanwhile point to consumer price inflation accelerating back to around 4%.

“The flash PMI survey data for March signal an unwelcome combination of slower growth and rising inflation following the outbreak of war in the Middle East,” warns Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“Companies are reporting a hit to demand from the additional uncertainty and cost of living impact generated by the conflict. Travel, transport and tourism related issues are compounded by financial market jitters and affordability constraints, notably including concern over the impact of higher interest rates, surging energy prices and supply chain delays.

“Companies are meanwhile building safety stocks amid concerns that the war may lead to more protracted supply issues and price rises while trimming headcounts to reduce overheads.”

Today’s PMI print appears to confirm the overall theme of the last couple of months… ‘higher’ inflation and stagnant (or falling) growth…

Source: Bloomberg

…in other words, central bankers’ biggest nemesis: Stagflation.

As Williamson concludes, “The Fed will therefore need juggle these intensifying upside risks to inflation against the growing risk of the economy losing growth momentum, with much depending on the duration of the war and its impact on energy prices and global supply chains.”