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Lakers center Deandre Ayton was ejected after a flagrant two foul on Alperen Sengun as Los Angeles fell apart against the Houston Rockets in Game 4 at Toyota Center.

The Mets have become an easy mark on social media these days as their dreadful 2026 season continues.

Compute Costs More Than Talent In AI

For leading AI companies, the biggest expense is not talent. It is compute.

This chart from Visual Capitalist’s AI Week, sponsored by Terzo, uses Epoch AI data to compare spending at Anthropic, Minimax, and Z.ai across R&D compute, inference compute, and staff plus other costs.

In every case, compute accounts for the majority of total spending, underscoring how capital-intensive it has become to build and serve frontier AI models.

How AI Company Costs Break Down

Despite differences in scale, all three companies allocate the largest share of their budgets to a single category: compute.

The data below compares spending composition across Anthropic, Minimax, and Z.ai. Anthropic’s figures are for 2025, while Minimax’s are from Q1 to Q3 of 2025 and Z.ai’s are for H1 2025.

Across all three AI companies, compute is the main cost center. Epoch AI estimates that R&D compute and inference compute together account for 57% to 70% of total spending, making infrastructure more expensive than staff and other costs in every case.

Among the three, Z.ai has the most R&D-heavy profile, with 58% of spending tied to compute powering model development and training.

Anthropic stands out for sheer scale. Epoch AI estimates the company spent $9.7 billion in 2025, including $6.8 billion on compute alone across training and inference.

Its costs are significantly higher than Minimax’s and Z.ai’s, even if the two Chinese AI companies’ figures were annualized to match Anthropic’s full-year period.

Both Chinese companies release many of their models as open source, meaning the model weights are freely available for anyone to download, modify, and run. This strategy helps them compete with better-funded U.S. labs by building developer adoption at a fraction of the cost.

AI Talent Costs Less Than Chips and Compute

One of the clearest takeaways is that talent costs less than compute in this comparison. Even though top AI labs pay some of the highest salaries in tech, staff and other costs still account for less than half of total spending at each of the three firms.

While the chart focuses on costs, Epoch AI estimates these labs are currently spending around 2–3x more than they generate in revenue, even as some expect economics to improve over time.

How These Estimates Were Built

This dataset comes with a few important caveats. Anthropic’s figures are based on reporting from The Information and are more speculative, while Minimax and Z.ai figures come from IPO filings released in January 2026.

The time periods also differ: Anthropic data is for the full year of 2025, Minimax covers 2025 Q1–Q3, and Z.ai covers 2025 H1. Epoch AI says its expense totals include operating expenses, cost of goods and services, and non-cash items such as stock-based compensation.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The Soaring Revenues of AI Companies on Voronoi.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/26/2026 - 23:25

Charlottesville: The Deceit Underlying The Hoax

Authored by Steve Cortes via RealClearPolitics.com,

For years, Democratic politicians and their allies in the legacy media have spread the damnable Charlottesville Hoax: the propaganda myth that President Trump praised bigots who rioted in 2017 in the Virginia town.

Of course, the opposite is true, as Trump actually said: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.”

Now, we learn that the entire hoax of Trump and Charlottesville is, itself, built upon another grand lie. The media and people like Joe Biden have continually pushed the narrative that some big, organic gathering of hateful Americans descended upon Charlottesville and represented some larger threat to the republic itself. But it now turns out that the “Unite the Right” rally was organized and financed by the highly partisan, left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center.

In a sweeping 11-count indictment, the Department of Justice and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche charge the advocacy group with criminal defrauding of donors and “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

The charges contained in this indictment are akin to the fire department becoming an aggressive criminal arson enterprise, setting fires all across a town, and then demanding more budget and authority to fight the very infernos it set ablaze.

So…the end result is that America endured years of propaganda that convinced a large segment of the population – in contravention of the facts – that their president supported violent hate merchants. Even worse, masses of unskeptical Americans, who consume only legacy media content, believed that the entire America First populist movement was based on bigotry, rather than patriotism.

Now, nearly a decade later, the truth is revealed about the deception that lay beneath that grand lie. There was a layer of duplicity here that is almost difficult to fathom. Only true Marxists could excuse this level of propaganda. The SPLC created hate groups and activities like the Charlottesville rally, and the complicit media then weaponized these concocted offenses by spreading outright lies about Trump’s reaction to the staged events.

I myself played a role in this saga regarding Charlottesville, best explained by a timeline:

March 2019 – After more than a year serving as a contributor on CNN, I grew tired of the near-nightly lies told about Charlottesville during the primetime hits when I was on-air. I tried my best to debunk the myth, but was routinely shouted down, and even “benched” for short periods for daring to tell the truth. So…I wrote a column at RealClearPolitics with the exact Trump transcript and precise citations.

April 2019 – Joe Biden launched his 2020 presidential campaign based entirely upon the Charlottesville lie, claiming that the “bulging veins” of the racists convinced him to run for the White House.

August 2019 – Dennis Prager had read my RealClearPolitics article and had me on his radio show repeatedly to discuss what we branded as the “Charlottesville Hoax.” He also asked me to narrate a five-minute video for his online platform, PragerU, debunking the hoax, which went mega-viral, with well over 10 million total views.

September 2019 – CNN removed me from the air. Rebecca Kutler, now the head of MSNOW and then the director of talent at CNN, expressly told me that the permanent “benching” was because of the Charlottesville video, even though I was clearly allowed to make such online videos, per the terms of my contract. I asked to be released so that I could do TV elsewhere, and she refused. In other words, they paid me to be silent, to stay on the sidelines.

December 2019 – I was released from CNN.

June 2024 – Supposedly objective “fact-checking” site Snopes finally admits the clear reality of the full transcripts and video evidence that Trump never praised bigots at Charlottesville.

April 2026 – The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted for millions of dollars in secret payments to racists to foment and organize racial unrest and events, including the Charlottesville event itself.

This entire sad saga matters.

• First, it unveils the systemic duplicity of the left in America. Because their demand for “hate” far exceeds the actual supply, they had to pay to manufacture bigotry, so that they then could oppose it.

• Second, the record reveals that lies build upon lies, while the truth remains, inherently, emancipating.

Whatever any citizen thinks of Donald Trump, the entire madness of Charlottesville represents a preventable and despicable tragedy. The actions of the SPLC were criminal and mafia-like. A young woman, Heather Heyer, lost her life because of this mayhem. More broadly, millions of Americans bought into an insidious lie and believed it for years, doing grave damage to the cohesion of our society.

Only a full accounting, now, can begin the process of healing and truth-telling.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/26/2026 - 23:00

As the starting left fielder in Game 1 of Sunday’s doubleheader, he went 0-for-2 and did not appear in the nightcap. The Mets lost 3-1 and 3-0 to the Rockies.

President Trump sat down with '60 Minutes' after a shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

What I do grade on is logic and process. Do the picks make sense for the Jets? There is no way to know if the players will fulfill their potential, but we can ask whether the selections make sense. Do any of the picks feel like a reach? Did they take character risks?

Futures Jump To Record High After Report Iran Offered New Non-Starter Proposal To Reopen Strait

Update (10:30pm): Just when it seemed that the market may have its first red Monday in a while - and the semiconductor bubble may actually have a down day after a ridiculous 18 day streak higher - the Trump-Axios plunge protection team struck again, and courtesy of Axios' in-house market levitator, Barak Ravid, whose specialty is creating cheerful market narratives to preserve faith that the Strait of Hormuz will open any second now, coupled with a few strategically timed flashing red headlines from Bloomberg, futures surged to a new record high, and oil pared after Axios reported that Iran offered the US a new proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. 

🚨President Trump is expected to hold on Monday a situation room meeting on Iran with his top national security and foreign policy team
🚨The meeting is expected to discuss the current stalemate in the negotiations with Iran and potential options for the next steps in the war https://t.co/nevd1SjWhd

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) April 27, 2026

According to the report, which is a rerun of news which hit about 12 hours earlier on Sunday, Axios ran earlier in the day but which no algos noticed, Iran - through Pakistani mediators - gave the Trump admin a new proposal for reaching a deal on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the ending of the war, however with nuclear negotiations postponed for a later stage, something which Trump has repeatedly said is a non-started. 

According to Ravid, the new proposal is aimed at overcoming the current stalemate in the talks and bypass the internal disagreements in the Iranian leadership about the scope of nuclear concessions it is willing to give in order to get a deal with the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the report is meant to eliminate the bitter taste in the market's mouth from yet another weekend where there was zero progress on either peace, of extending the ceasefire, or certainly on unblocking Hormuz. So it was time to sprinkle an anonymous US official and two anonymous "sources with knowledge" to kickstart the market meltup. As for the actual "proposal" even Axios admits it is unlikely to make any impact:

But reaching a deal on the Strait of Hormuz first and lifting the U.S. blockade would leave President Trump with no real leverage in order to get Tehran to give up on its stockpile of enriched uranium and commit to a suspension of uranium enrichment for at least a decade.

Addressing those two nuclear concerns through military action or diplomacy are a key objective for Trump in the war against Iran.

Which is precisely why nothing will happen, but at least stocks will now levitate higher instead of drifting lower. 

Sure enough, Asian shares rose 1.3% while MSCI’s emerging markets index hit a record high, as easing oil prices help curb inflation and support economic growth. As sentiment improved, US equity-index futures erased earlier losses to rise 0.1%. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index erased earlier gains and fell 0.1% after the report.

“The news aligns with market expectations that Iran and the United States would eventually reach an agreement,” said Yugo Tsuboi, chief strategist at Daiwa Securities Co. “The headline came at a good time as we head into peak earnings season.” Of course, the Trump admin is well aware of that. 

Separately, Axios reported, citing the usual group of "anonymous sources", that Trump is expected to hold on Monday a situation room meeting on Iran with his top national security and foreign policy team. The meeting is expected to discuss the current stalemate in the negotiations with Iran and potential options for the next steps in the war.

Trump signaled in an interview with Fox News on Sunday that he wants to continue the naval blockade, hoping that it will get Iran to cave in the next few weeks when its oil facilities could be under risk of collapsing due to the inability to export oil.

"When you have vast amounts of oil pouring through your system ... if for any reason this line is closed because you can't put it into containers or ships ... what happens is that line explodes from within ... they say they only have about three days before that happens," Trump said.

"And when it explodes you can never rebuild it the way it was...it would only be 50% of what it is right now. So I think they are under pressure."

We previously discussed the risk to Iran's infrastructure as a result of shut ins in "Tehran Timeline: Iran Has 15 Days Until Its Oil Industry Begins Full Shut-Ins."

 

* * * 

Earlier:

Stocks futures fell and oil and the dollar jumped in early trading, as risk sentiment was dented after Trump scrapped his envoys' trip to Pakistan for Iran talks, breaking down momentum toward a second round of peace talks between the US and Iran, even as the Strait of Hormuz remains indefinitely blocked. 

Futures contracts for the S&P 500 Index dropped 0.3% after the underlying index closed at a record on Friday, although with two-thirds of S&P constituents closing red: this was the second worst negative breadth all-time high for the S&P following the bizarre October record high when the S&P printed an ATH with 80% of stocks lower.

The last 2 all-time highs have been on negative breadth: Friday's record saw 324 SPX companies close lower; this was the 2nd worst negative breadth record only after Oct 28, 2025 when the S&P closed at a record with 80% of S&P companies red. pic.twitter.com/J5TBJZvvLS

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 25, 2026

The dollar rose against most major peers, with risk sensitive currencies such as the South African rand among the biggest laggards. Brent crude oil rose more than 2% above $107, the highest in 20 days. US Treasury futures edged lower in early trading.

The soft start to a very busy week - the bulk of the S&P is set to report in the next few days including most Mag 7s (MSFT, AMZN, META, GOOGL, AAPL) - comes after efforts to resume US-Iran peace talks collapsed over the weekend when Trump abruptly canceled a planned trip by his top envoys and Tehran said it won’t negotiate under threat. The setback adds to concerns for global equities at or near record highs (hedge funds just sold the most tech stocks in two years) with Brent crude oil rising to a 20 day high elevated bond yields from Sydney to London driving up borrowing costs.

Investors are still encouraged by strong corporate earnings and the AI boom “while keeping the US-Iran situation on their side mirrors,” said Indosuez Wealth strategist Francis Tan. But “the market is driving at 120km/h now and may have less reaction time when it is really time to change lanes.”

There have been some signs that investor enthusiasm for the biggest beneficiaries of the month-long rally may be waning. According to Goldman and BofA’s trading desks, investors should hedge across rate sensitive areas of the market such as small caps, regional banks and gold, adding that underperformance might still shake out those holding gold as high beta risk asset.

Separately, markets will remain on edge as major central banks including the Fed and Bank of Japan deliver policy decisions beginning Tuesday (no surprises expected). While investors expect them to all leave rates unchanged, traders will be alert to signs officials are worried about the inflation threat posed by the biggest disruption to oil supply in history from the Iran war.

A fresh round of speculation that policy tightening may come in coming months would be negative for government debt, which has already underperformed other assets in recent weeks as stocks and credit markets rallied with traders looking past the war. The Bloomberg GlobalAgg Index, a measure of global investment grade debt, has slid 1.7% since the Iran war broke out against the 1.5% gain in global stocks.

While the aggressive policy tightening cycle that was penciled in during the first part of the Middle East war has been partially unwound, “markets have been forced to recognize that the inflation threat is not over,” Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Capital Markets wrote. April inflation reports are unlikely to offer relief from firm March readings and the spill over in to core prices is becoming more visible.

But the big variable for markets this week will not be geopolitics but earnings, with tens of trillions in market cap, some 42% of the S&P, set to report: Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon.com and Meta are set to report Wednesday, followed by Apple a day later. The companies are worth nearly $16 trillion combined, representing a quarter of the S&P 500 Index’s market capitalization.

“It’s going to be a critical week,” said Keith Lerner, chief investment officer and chief market strategist at Truist Advisory Services. Results need “to validate this recent move,” he added.

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/26/2026 - 22:50

A while before the couple got engaged, sources had already been telling us that the “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” singer was dead set on having a child, even if it was on his own.

A while before the couple got engaged, sources had already been telling us that the “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” singer was dead set on having a child, even if it was on his own.

Former Steelers coach Mike Tomlin predicted that Aaron Rodgers would be back with the Steelers in 2026.  Tomlin, who is officially a member of the NBC broadcast team covering the NFL, thinks Rodgers has an “addiction” to the game of football and that it would be hard for him to step away just yet.  “Man,...

California's Billionaire Tax Proposal Has 'Slippery Slope' Lever

California’s latest effort to tax its richest residents into leaving is barreling toward the ballot - only this time, it's got a built-in 'slippery slope' lever once voters hand them the keys.

Backers of the proposed “billionaire tax” say they have already cleared the first hurdle, gathering more than enough signatures (at least 1.5 million) to qualify a measure that would impose a one-time 5% levy on residents with net worths above $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. On its face, the proposal is straightforward: a targeted strike at roughly 200 ultrawealthy individuals meant to plug a looming multibillion-dollar hole in California’s healthcare funding. But buried in the fine print-and now surfacing in a growing political backlash-is a provision that could allow lawmakers to revisit, revise, and potentially expand the tax later with a two-thirds vote. That clause is fast becoming the real story.

The initiative’s language allows the California Legislature to amend the law so long as changes are “consistent with” and “further the purposes” of the act (aka the slippery slope). In Sacramento, that phrasing is doing a lot of work. Critics argue it effectively hands lawmakers a tool that could evolve well beyond a one-time billionaire levy. With a two-thirds majority, the Legislature could lower thresholds, extend timelines, or reinterpret what qualifies as taxable wealth. In a state where Democrats already hold supermajorities in both chambers, that is less a hypothetical than a political reality.

This is significant

I get it — taxing Billionaires is popular

But the proposed tax in CA is something vastly more expansive

It would give the CA legislature a new power:

The ability to lower the threshold or repeatedly pass the tax

Simply with votes from the CA legislature https://t.co/YcBUy7gTJN

— Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) April 27, 2026

California, meanwhile, has done this kind of thing before where they kick the door open with a seemingly innocuous bill. For example, in 2012 voters approved Proposition 30 as “temporary taxes to fund education,” promising a sunset once the recession eased. Four years later, with the economy recovered, the same coalition returned with Proposition 55 and extended the high-income tax hikes for another 12 years—without extending the sales tax or returning to voters for full approval. Nearly identical “consistent with and furthers the purposes” amendment clauses appear in Proposition 64 (marijuana legalization) and Proposition 63 (Mental Health Services Act), and have been used repeatedly to expand taxes, regulations, and spending far beyond the original ballot language. The billionaire tax measure contains this exact same permissive language. Once voters bless a flexible wealth-tax framework, Sacramento has shown it will use that door when fiscal pressure returns - which, in California, it always does.

The proposal has already triggered a high-profile reaction among the very group it targets. One of the most prominent examples is Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Sergey BrinPhotographer: Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg

In a late-evening confrontation at a Christmas party hosted by crypto titan Chris Larsen in a treehouse nestled in redwoods north of San Francisco, Brin and his wellness-influencer girlfriend Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto told Gov. Gavin Newsom they were leaving the state over the proposed billionaire tax, which could hit Brin’s massive stake in Alphabet and his fortune.

Newsom, who opposes the wealth tax, was still telling people about the lengthy exchange at the party months later, complaining of a lingering cold the pair had given him, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing private conversations with the governor. -Bloomberg

Brin followed through: he relocated to Nevada ahead of the tax’s residency cutoff, purchasing a $42 million lakeside mansion on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. He has since poured more than $58 million into political efforts over the past four months, becoming the largest donor to the group Building a Better California, which is dedicated to fighting the wealth tax and pushing pro-business policies. His move and massive spending have become a symbol - if not entirely representative - of a broader anxiety rippling through California’s economic base. The concern isn’t just that billionaires might leave. It’s what happens if they do.

Also his wellness-influencer girlfriend (Gilbert-Soto) is pretty hot. 

California’s tax structure is unusually dependent on its wealthiest residents. Even a small number of departures can create outsized revenue swings. Analysts have warned the proposed tax could generate “tens of billions” in the short term-but also risk long-term losses if it accelerates outmigration. Gov. Gavin Newsom has echoed that warning, opposing the measure on the grounds that it could destabilize the state’s already volatile revenue system.

That leaves California facing a paradox increasingly common in blue-state fiscal policy: a push to extract more from the ultrawealthy, paired with a growing dependence on keeping them in place. Supporters argue the stakes justify the risk. The tax is designed to offset federal healthcare cuts projected to cost the state more than $28 billion annually and leave millions without coverage.

“This did not start as a political statement about rising inequality,” said union leaders backing the measure. “We are simply trying to solve a huge and immediate problem.”

But opponents say the mechanism matters as much as the goal. Their central warning is that once the state normalizes wealth-based taxation through a flexible statutory framework, the definition of “wealthy” can shift. Today that threshold is $1 billion. Tomorrow, critics argue, it could be far lower-especially in a legislature empowered to act without returning to voters.

What a mess... 

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/26/2026 - 22:35

"I don't know how you can miss a whole car. I mean, yes, I'm slammed to the ground because it's a Lamborghini, but I mean, still, how can you miss a car?"

The loosely-organized group traces its roots to Civil War abolitionists and claims to be nonviolent.

Trevor Bauer wanted to send a message on social media to those doubting him. 

The look on First Lady Melania Trump’s face after a gunman tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ dinner Saturday night said it all. 

Naz's clear threat about widows inheriting their husband's debt sure sounds like a reason for Cass to shake her moneymaker.

At long last, a vampire musical that doesn’t suck.

“The clippers that they gave me have pretty sharp edges. So I had to be really mindful of that, because at one point, I do put it around [Jacob Elordi's] toe."

“The clippers that they gave me have pretty sharp edges. So I had to be really mindful of that, because at one point, I do put it around [Jacob Elordi's] toe."