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Framber Valdez will lead the Tigers to victory over the Rays on Monday evening, Stitches predicts.

The 49ers released a statement following the news that team owner Jed York had been arrested.

Voting is now open for Page Six’s second-annual Virtual Reali-Tea’s Awards! You can vote on each category, including “Best Reunion Performance,” and “Hot-Tea of the Year,” among others, as the full list of nominees has been revealed. Tickets to the VRT Awards, sponsored by Kahlúa and Tri-State Cadillac, are available to purchase now. Vote now for the reality stars...

Voting is now open for Page Six’s second-annual Virtual Reali-Tea’s Awards, hosted by Evan Real and Danny Murphy! You can vote on each category, including “Best Reunion Performance,” and “Hot-Tea of the Year,” among others, as the full list of nominees has been revealed. Tickets to the VRT Awards, sponsored by Kahlúa and Tri-State Cadillac, are available to purchase...

The Great Walkback: Sam Altman Admits He Was Wrong On AI's Economic Timeline

For three years, Sam Altman has pitched the imminent, wholesale disruption of the global economy. This week, staring down the barrel of an IPO - based on a business model that's actively being 'wholesale disrupted' by China - the OpenAI chief executive quietly admitted he got the timing wrong. Appearing on David Senra's Founders podcast, Altman conceded that the economic upheaval he forecast following GPT-4 simply hasn't materialized - and that society is adapting far more sluggishly than he anticipated.

In an interview with @davidsenra, @sama conceded what few technologists ever will. He believed GPT-4 meant every software business was immediately up for grabs. Three years later the customers are still renewing with the same vendors.

The lesson is not that the technology… pic.twitter.com/tEZWoldxyC

— Patrick F. Feeley (@PFFeeley) August 24, 2026

"I thought when we got to GPT-4, which was back in 2023, that very quickly after that there was going to be much more disruption, software businesses up for grabs right away, than it turned out to be," Altman admitted.

Of course, the technology isn't to blame... The problem, he said, is that human routine simply doesn't move that fast. "I think I was wrong about a few things, but one in terms of the speed: the economy just has so much inertia," said the guy who suggested letting AI entertain your kid in the car instead of talking to them. "People keep doing the same things, buying from the same company, wanting to use their tools the same way." Altman even admitted that he himself resists the AI coding tools his own company builds, defaulting to familiar workflows.

Sam Altman admits he was wrong on AI's timeline and says society and the economy will adapt more slowly

"I thought when we got to GPT-4, which was back in 2023, that very quickly after that there was going to be much more disruption, software businesses up for grabs right away,… https://t.co/5oNHTky7fK pic.twitter.com/AIA5gpJwFB

— Fireside Alpha (@firesidealpha) August 23, 2026

According to Altman, this is good news - since a slower ramp will cushion the economic and societal hit from rapid job losses. "I think this is actually a positive in many ways, and it's going to make this big transition go smoother and slower. I'm grateful for it," he said. Yet the concession itself remains unequivocal: "We've all been too ambitious on timelines. Even with this incredible technology, society and the economy will adapt more slowly."

For macro-skeptics and market analysts who have been warning that explosive capex has outstripped real-world adoption, Altman's well-spun answers are validation. Hundreds of billions of dollars have flowed into data centers, power infrastructure, and silicon on the premise of an economy remade overnight. Now, boy kavalier admits the broader economy has too much structural friction to cooperate. Put simply: you cannot re-engineer human behavior to accommodate an IPO roadmap - even as OpenAI reportedly lays the groundwork for a public offering with valuations floated as high as $1 trillion.

Turns out you can't change human behavior and decades of habit to suit your IPO timeline https://t.co/S7KAvRTUKO

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 23, 2026

What could go wrong?

According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), AI bubble investment now exceeds:

• Canal mania of the 1830s
• UK railway mania of the 1840s
• US railway mania of 1873
• Electrification mania of the 1920s
• Dot-com mania of the 1990s https://t.co/B6rbbu0cJi pic.twitter.com/TAfsED2Asp

— Financelot (@FinanceLancelot) August 22, 2026 The Hardware Hedging: Nvidia as "Buyer of Last Resort"

Upstream suppliers are already positioning themselves for a cooling enterprise trajectory. A recent Wccftech report highlights how Nvidia is effectively serving as the "buyer of last resort" for its own GPUs. The chipmaker has earmarked roughly $7 billion for AI startup Poolside - allocating $6 billion to license its IP and acqui-hire its engineering team, alongside a $1 billion direct equity investment at a $12 billion valuation.

The deal establishes a massive internal demand sink to bolster Nvidia's proprietary open-weight Nemotron models. Should downstream enterprise demand taper off - precisely as Altman's observations on inertia suggest - Nvidia can simply re-route its silicon internally rather than letting excess inventory idle or margins collapse.

Altman also went on the offensive against the doomsday marketing of safety-centric competitors - most visibly Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Altman blasted the industry's "countdown to destruction" rhetoric as "the language of anti-human dictators," taking direct aim at what he termed the "benevolent dictator" narrative.

Under this framing, Altman argued, tech elites ask the public to surrender their autonomy and let a handful of "unelected" companies "make decisions for the world" in exchange for promised utopias like curing cancer and generating limitless wealth. To Altman, consolidating unchecked authority under the guise of existential risk is a far greater hazard than any rogue model.

It is a convenient pivot. Having conceded that his own timelines were oversold, Altman steers the conversation away from the capital cycle and toward Darioooo.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 14:00

Gold: From DC's "Enemy" To Its Last Hope?

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

As headlines from the Iranian “conflict” continue to leave the world guessing as to what, if any, military, political and financial solutions lie ahead, we can at least know this much: The approaching autumn looks a bit scary.

A Market Fall in the Fall?

The macro setting for our collective transition from summer to fall in 2026 is marked by rising yields across the western yield curve, from Paris to DC.

These rising yields, which represent the cost of servicing debt for nations and enterprises (i.e. stocks) already in debt beyond the sustainability mark, are nothing less than flashing warnings of Uh-Oh ahead.

As of this writing, for example, the yield on the 10Y UST has climbed past the Rubicon of sanity to a dangerous 4.7% at the same time trillions of outstanding USTs face a re-finance at much higher rates.

Needless to say, U.S. tax receipts and GDP will not be enough to pay for the same.

More Non-QE-QE…

This means we can expect more “Non-QE-QE” from a debt-trapped and fork-tongued Fed which will need to create trillions in more back-door liquidity (i.e. synthetic dollars) off the Fed’s balance sheet to avoid having to say the embarrassing “QE” word out loud.

Toward this desperate end, Warsh has familiar tricks up his sleeve to keep the TBTF banks (the Fed’s real mandate) temporarily liquid at the expense of Main Street inflation and employment stresses (which are the Fed’s pretended mandates).

In addition to draining liquidity from the Treasury General Account, bailing out the Repo markets or issuing more unwanted IOUs from the short end of the yield-curve,Warsh, talking like a hawk, will be dovishly adding a trillion dollars of levered capital to the big banks by simple non-compliance with the Basel III rules, a maze so complicated that no one on Main Street is expected to notice.

Meanwhile, as Japan, formerly America’s largest buyer of USTs, has become a massive seller of the same, this latest threat to Uncle Sam’s unloved IOUs is being “solved” by more indirect QE conveniently described as “repurchase agreements.”

But in plain English, all these “repurchase agreements” boil down to is this: The moment Japan dumps USTs, the Fed is buying them at volume in a near-term attempt to keep bond prices (and hence yields) under control with printed dollar demand for otherwise unloved USTs.

This is just a diet-Coke version of Yield Curve Control and hidden QE by another name.

America’s Check-Mate Moment

In short, as the world foreseeably dumps weaponized and over-indebted USTs at a record pace in favor of gold-stacking at an equally record pace (driven primarily by the Chinese), the writing on the U.S. debt wall couldn’t be more clear: American debt management has reached its checkmate moment.

There are no good moves left.

If the Fed allows rates to go higher to “fight inflation,” this will crush everything but the USD in its wake—from stocks and bonds to BTC and yes, even gold–temporarily.

But eventually, higher rates just hit a wall of Fiscal Dominance wherein the rates become too high for even Uncle Sam to pay its own debt.

As a result, more dollar debasing QE inevitably follows, as we saw in the wake of Powell’s attempt at Higher-for-Longer in 2022 and 2023, after which gold ripped to all-time-highs in the years (and liquidity) that followed.

Alternatively, if the Fed uses extreme liquidity for extreme YCC (which it always ends up doing), this just “saves” its bond market at the direct expense of its currency, which leads, once again, to yet another tailwind for gold.

The Dollar (and Gold’s) End-Game is Clear

What all of these broad strokes ultimately point to is this: The dollar’s mathematical end-game is weaker not stronger; which means gold’s end-game is stronger not weaker.

This is not only a consequence of the hard math of debt, it is the very goal of a now desperate DC which is increasingly in favor of a weaker rather than stronger dollar to achieve its “Hamiltonian” new direction of allegedly making America “great again.”

As for this new direction, Treasury Secretary Bessent all but confessed this in a recent WSJ op-ed, and even Trump, knowingly or unknowingly, said the “Hamiltonian” part out loud when bragging about returning to the “policies of 1870 to 1913.”

But just what is this “Hamiltonian” new direction?

Going Hamiltonian

In a nutshell, it boils down to Hamilton’s 1790 version of building a then emerging American productivity base via extreme protectionism and hence otherwise unfair tariff practices.

This effectively meant that foreigners rather than Americans would pay for America’s own growth (or post-civil war re-growth).

Such protectionism made sense when America was an emerging nation in the 1790’s, or seeking to re-build its economy after the U.S. civil war ended in 1865.

But as America celebrates its 250th national birthday in 2026, this return to Hamiltonian thinking looks a tad more desperate than innovative.

Since the U.S. outsourced American manufacturing to China under the WTO deals of 2000 and 2001 (nod to Clinton), a country once known for manufacturing became an outsourced nation of factory lay-offs and extreme financialization rather than domestic manufacturing.

This was a disaster.

Rather than open China’s market as a great “purchaser” of American widgets, the WTO deal, with the complicit support of American CEO’s seeking cheaper labor and higher personal incomes/margins, simply opened China up as the greater manufacturer of American widgets.

Now the Trump white house seeks to reshore American manufacturing and labor, which on its face, is more than reasonable and very much needed.

Hamilton in 2026?

But here’s the rub: Reshoring is expensive. And the U.S. under Trump, unlike Hamilton’s 18th-century America, is staring down the fatal barrel of $40T in public debt.

This is a debt figure which must surely have Alexander Hamilton rolling in his Manhattan grave.

In order for DC to re-shore American manufacturing in such a debt backdrop, it will need a weaker dollar to both inject the needed capital as well as compete in a trade war which requires a weaker rather than stronger dollar for its export advantages.

On the other side of the Hamiltonian (i.e., protectionist) camp in DC are the classic neo-liberalist or globalist policy makers who prefer free flows and free trade to get the lowest prices on goods for American citizens.

Naturally, cheaper TV’s made in China or Japan are nice for American shoppers at Walmart, but it’s hardly much of a trade-off to haver cheaper TVs in American living rooms at the expense of millions of laid off workers in the U.S. rust-belt.

Make the Dollar Weak Again

Thus, for Trump and/or Bessent to make American manufacturing “great again,” a weaker dollar is not just a debate, it’s essential policy.

The problem is a weaker dollar helps DC, but the dollar debasement and inflation required to re-shore and re-build American productivity will hit Main Street hard in the gut via a dollar so diluted (and unsupported by equivalent wage hikes) that not even a comically bogus CPI scale will be able to hide the inflation metastasizing throughout America.

This means DC will need another way to pay for its Hamiltonian schemes than just protectionism and dollar-debasement gone wild.

The Golden Option

They will need another asset to monetize this ambitious project of American re-shoring. As Bessent himself hinted, it’s time to “monetize the asset side of the American balance sheet.”

To me, at least, this means it’s time to monetize the 260 million ounces of allegedly U.S.-held gold still priced at roughly $42.00/oz.

Such a revaluation of U.S. gold holdings (aided by the Venezuelan gold handed to Uncle Sam via the Bank of England) to market price would remove the embarrassment of more “QE” headlines and a too-rapid dollar debasement.

In short, such a gold revaluation would buy the USA something it desperately needs: Time and money.

From “Enemy” to Asset of Last Resort

But any re-valuation of U.S.-held gold would certainly do a lot more for the U.S. balance sheet if gold were marked to market at a higher rather than lower market price.

This places the U.S. at not only an historical decision point, but also an historical turning point as to its traditional view on gold.

Ever since the U.S. left the gold standard in 1971, gold was, as Volcker famously said, “America’s enemy.” After all, rising gold was an open middle finger to a post-71, nothing-backed dollar.

This early need to fight the golden “enemy” explains why the COMEX and CME tricks to legally price fix gold and silver began in earnest (along with the Petrodollar scheme) directly after the dollar decoupled from gold in August of 1971.

It was essential that rising gold be controlled to avoid humiliating the Greenback.

But 55 years later, the “exorbitant privilege” of the USD’s global hegemony is now stumbling under the self-inflicted wound of too much debt, a distrusted and weaponized IOU and a petrodollar in open shift in the wake of the Iranian fiasco.

As a result of these changing facts, and after decades of exporting US inflation to the rest of the world, the increasingly diluted and unloved dollar is no longer just the world’s problem, it’s America’s problem as well.

Which means that what Bessent and Trump (as well as Judy Shelton) are subtly suggesting is that gold is no longer our “enemy.”

Instead, and quite ironically, gold is now one of America’s last options to de-deficit at least a portion of its fiscal nightmare.

Rather than Repress Gold, Let It Run

Or stated even more simply, it is now in the USA’s best interest to let gold run rather than to price fix it lower on a COMEX which has lost both its gold and credibility as China and Hong Kong move from paper-based exchanges to physical precious metal exchanges.

Gold at $4,000/oz., for example, won’t help the USA de-deficit nearly as much as it could if gold were at $17,000/oz., $20,000/oz or higher (in fact much higher) in the years to come.

And if you are wondering why central banks are stacking more gold than USTs today, it’s partly because that is precisely where they see gold heading: Much higher…

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 13:40

The endorsements come as the Clarity Act, the crypto industry's top policy priority, stalls in the Senate amid opposition from some lawmakers.

“They throw raves anywhere and this is one of those places that makes no sense at all," the DJ said.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas tore into the social pressure he's experienced for black people to have liberal political views, likening it to segregation.

The Trump admin aims to choke off revenue streams to the Iranian regime by pressuring secondary countries to stop doing oil, energy and business deals with Tehran.

Ariana Grande and Ricky Alvarez shop in London, Naomi Campbell hits the beach and more snaps...

Ariana Grande and Ricky Alvarez shop in London, Naomi Campbell hits the beach and more snaps...

Nvidia Informs Hyperscalers About Incoming Price Hikes As Memory Costs Soar

The AI infrastructure buildout boom could soon enter another inflationary wave. 

Nvidia's largest hyperscaler customers face sharply higher costs next year, with Vera Rubin and Grace Blackwell systems expected to jump in price as surging memory costs ripple through the chip stacks.

Bloomberg cited sources familiar with Nvidia's new pricing regime, indicating that hyperscalers will see a 15% increase in prices for Rubin and Grace Blackwell processors next year. They said the size of the increase will depend on the chip generation and memory configuration.

Contract manufacturers serving major data center projects, including Microsoft, Google and Oracle, have started notifying customers about the incoming increases, those people said.

Nvidia's AI accelerators remain expensive and in short supply because production at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing has struggled to keep pace with soaring demand. Nvidia generates gross margins of about 75%, but the latest increases suggest that even the world's most valuable semiconductor company is unwilling to absorb rising memory costs.

The coming price shock may intensify pressure on hyperscalers already committing hundreds of billions of dollars to AI infrastructure. Goldman has forecast that AI CapEx among hyperscalers will top $1 trillion next year:

Source

Meanwhile...

• WSJ Catches Up, Discovers AI's Off-Balance-Sheet Liabilities Are $3 Trillion And Growing By $1.2 Trillion Per Quarter

Higher chip-stack costs have sent the US Producer Price Index for semiconductors and electronic components to uncomfortable levels for the Trump administration as it tries to tame the inflation beast.

Beyond the surging PPI for chips, driven by rising chip-stack costs amid strong demand and a memory chip shortage, the AI race has also put pressure on US Treasuries, as record debt issuance funds CapEx. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 13:20

The daredevil couple who scaled the Empire State Building were high on love outside Manhattan court Monday — wildly making out after prosecutors revealed they could land a plea deal.

The 49ers appear to be adding depth to a linebacker room led by Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw.

Police responded to a life-in-danger call at the home and the toddler was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

What happened to former Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder after his $6.05 billion sale of the team in July 2023?

Mole Men Return? Weird Manhattan Manhole Crew Spotted At 4AM

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

The manhole people are back.

Early Saturday morning, just after 4 a.m., a group was filmed exiting a manhole in Manhattan.

The footage, captured and shared by independent New York photographer Viral News NYC, shows the individuals climbing out of the street in the dead of night once again.

The manhole people are back .

They were spotted at 4 am in Manhattan exiting another man hole . pic.twitter.com/F2VUD7DwAE

— Viral News NYC (@ViralNewsNYC) August 22, 2026

A clearer image of one of the men soon followed. Commenters immediately noted the resemblance: "Dude really looks like the Mexican Mario."

At least now we have a face.

Dude really looks like the Mexican Mario pic.twitter.com/w2tUoL0Ubx

— Viral News NYC (@ViralNewsNYC) August 23, 2026

This is the latest odd chapter in a pattern that first gripped the city in late spring.

Groups of men in waders, boots, headlamps, and carrying tools have been repeatedly documented prying open manhole covers, disappearing into New York's vast sewer network for hours, then resurfacing to change clothes on the sidewalk before vanishing in waiting vehicles.

In June, there were a wave of sightings across Brooklyn and Queens.

Those incidents included a group of roughly seven men emerging around 2 a.m. from a manhole on McDonald Avenue in Gravesend after spending hours underground. Another crew entered near Heyward Street and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg around 1 a.m. and exited more than two hours later. An earlier episode in Astoria, Queens, on May 5 showed three men in hip waders lifting a cover and descending while a vehicle idled nearby.

Surveillance from a local auto shop owner in Astoria captured one of those moments. Aki Jakupovic, who was working late, said the men "acted like I wasn't even there." One witness described the Queens group as looking "like the Ninja Turtles."

Police and the Department of Environmental Protection investigated the spring cases. Emergency Services Unit teams went underground. Officials reported finding no explosives, no damage to infrastructure, and "no known threat to public safety."

The leading explanation offered by sources was scavenging: men hunting for coins, wallets, jewelry, scrap metal, or other valuables that wash into the city's 7,400 miles of sewer pipes.

That theory has history. In 2015, a part-time city worker and two companions were arrested after spending four hours in Brooklyn sewers looking for "gold, jewelry and guns." Then-Police Commissioner Bill Bratton remarked at the time: "God knows what they were looking for. I know damn sure I wouldn't be crawling through the sewers of New York, but these three evidently were up to something down there."

A similar arrest in April 2025 produced a more straightforward confession from one of the men, Willer Green: "The reason we went down there is that people lose their gold down there. We got to sell it to make money."

Urban explorers consulted by WIRED in June largely rejected the idea that the recent crews were part of their scene. One creator put it bluntly: "There's nothing of value down there besides 'doo-doo water and a few needles.' And sewers are pretty risky because there is basically zero cell service down there."

Another observed that the groups appeared "way too sophisticated" and that multiple crews hitting different locations across the city "seems fishy to me. This might be more than just exploration."

The Department of Environmental Protection has been consistent on one point: unauthorized entry is "both illegal and extremely dangerous." Toxic gases, sudden flooding, structural collapse, and the complete lack of cell service make the system a death trap for the unprepared.

Yet the pattern continues. The latest Manhattan sighting comes months after the spring wave, with no public arrests, no named suspects, and no visible escalation.

A NewsNation discussion later examined the broader implications, including whether unauthorized access to critical underground infrastructure raises national security questions beyond simple scavenging.

New York's sewer system runs beneath banks, businesses, transit hubs, and sensitive sites. In a city that has absorbed large numbers of unvetted migrants under sanctuary policies, the repeated appearance of organized teams equipped for prolonged underground work is not a curiosity. It is a vulnerability.

Officials prefer the scavenger narrative. Residents watching the videos see something else: purposeful crews operating with near impunity in the middle of the night. The absence of swift consequences only deepens the skepticism.

When unidentified groups can repeatedly breach a major city's subterranean network and walk away, the "no threat" assurance starts to sound like institutional preference for quiet rather than clarity.

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.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 13:00

Deposit $10, get $20 with the Polymarket promo code NYPMAX1.

The 1971 plane faith was flying solo on Saturday belongs to his Fort Myers-based aviation company usoarflorida LLC, but said that Faith does not fly commercially for the firm.