Booker? Hardly Know'er
The legacy of Liberation Day. Plus, a new way to math.
Hey Friends,
Good morning to everyone except the owners of Forever 21.
Fast fashion just got faster, as the go-to place for trash tops just started closing down.
It's news like this that reminds us that being 21 is only temporary, but the carbon footprint is forever.
Here's an article I wrote about this topic back in 2023.
Daniel Herndon
Let's get to The News.
Hot Takes
Week 14 of 2025
Booker Record Breaker
They say talk is cheap, and if they're correct, then Cory Booker is practically free after his marathon speech before Congress. The record speech, sponsored by Depends, lasted for 25 hours and 5 minutes, and consisted of zero bathroom breaks. His speech seeks to remind the American People that no party can give you a lecture better than the Democrats can.
Strom Thurmond, who was opposing a civil rights bill in 1957, set the prior record in a filibuster speech. Cory's, on the contrary, was not a filibuster, so it didn’t delay a vote. It just delayed everything else.
His colleagues are calling him a hero. Others are calling him to ask how he did it – at 55, few can sleep through the night without taking a bathroom break. Democrats credit the marathon speech with forcing the Trump Administration to reschedule authoritarianism for Wednesday instead of Tuesday. (more)
Celebrating Liberation
It's liberation day, and thanks to Trump tariffs, corporate America has been liberated from profits, with Thursday's stock market graph being depicted best by sharing a picture of Shaq standing next to Kevin Hart.
As you can see in this image, things were good when they were Steph Curry, then they were Shaq, and they were still pretty good, even if we were missing some free throws. But then suddenly, everything is Kevin Hart, and that just can't be good.
So now, stocks are down, leaving us with the worst quarter since Taylor Swift swept football.
To put that in perspective, it is as though the market value of The Lorem Ipsum has dropped by roughly 13 dollars. The DOW specifically dropped 1300 points at Thursday's opening, and remained volatile for hours after that.
We see that Trump's tariffs are not popular with investors, but even some Republicans joined with Democrats in the Senate to push a bill to block the measure, a bill which passed the Senate by 51 votes. The bill is unlikely to survive in the House.
When Trump announced the tariffs on what he called "Liberation Day," he showed a chart that indicated tariffs being charged by various countries, putting China at the top at 67%, if you count currency manipulation, trade barriers and PIA charges (pain in the ass charges). Ultimately, a very straightforward calculation, which was later explained when the White House provided a mathematical equation to understand how reciprocal tariffs were calculated. I've reproduced the equation here, and as you can see, while it is complicated math, it's a language even a high school TikTokker can understand.
To unpack this for the rest of you, that translates to the trade gap between our country and a trade partner, divided by our portion of the trade.
Or in other words: A ÷ B. (more)
The Wisconsin Return Policy
If you’re considering a career change, maybe consider becoming a professional voter? It’s a line of work right up there with professional poker players or working in marketing, where it is the most manipulative who succeed. Just ask Elon Musk, who earlier this week would have paid you between fifty and one million dollars to hire you to vote for the judge of his choice. The election in Wisconsin was a critical choice that sought to save Elon's pocketbook, and therefore all of humanity, as he described it.
After putting $25 million into the race to push a conservative judge, his efforts lost when Wisconsin told Elon he can take a wakashaw off a short cliff. (more)
That's it for this week.
Remember: The Lorem Ipsum will never pay you to be a member, but you can, if you choose, pay to be one on your own, and pay for friends to join as well.
Have a great weekend!