Hola Libertinus,

This week’s dispatch comes straight from the Libertas Cabinet of Curiosities…

West’s polishing the serious artifacts… Powell’s likely heir at the Fed, the housing market’s rate chokehold, Rhodesian bush war tactics, and Milei wanting the disabled to suffer?

Zack’s shaking the display case… tariffs as jingoistic sales taxes, death by Doritos, psilocybin for an anti-aging, and the straight white Canadian who catfished the DEI poetry circuit.

Let’s get into it.

📡 S I G N A L S

Why Fed governor Adriana Kugler's vacancy matters for Trump (Axios)

Fed governor Adriana Kugler resigned from her post, which Trump is expected to fill with whoever he intends to nominate as the next Fed Chair once Powell's term is up. We still don't know who Trump will nominate, but it could create a tricky situation for markets as the new governor may be considered a "shadow Fed Chair" in the interim, with an outsized influence on markets. In any case, Trump's sole monetary policy prerogative seems to be dropping rates, so I suspect whoever is nominated will try to start moving the needle in that direction. Whether or not rates should drop is a valid question with room for disagreement, but rates dropping as a result of influence from the executive branch is without question a bad thing for the market's faith in the dollar. ~West

Trump’s Tariffs Are Making Money. That May Make Them Hard to Quit. (🔒NYT)

The administration’s tariffs are making money. Not an insignificant amount of money either. Which means Washington just found a new way to pick your pocket. Tariffs are just sales taxes in disguise: slapped on the importer, passed to the distributor, passed to the retailer, and by the time it hits the shelves at Home Depot, you get to pay the “jingoistic surcharge.” The only difference from a normal sales tax is the optics: no line item on your receipt, just a higher sticker price. The Left can blame “corporate greed,” the Right can blame “Bidenomics,” and meanwhile Uncle Sugar skims billions off the top while waving the flag. ~Zack

Housing market still struggling (Yahoo)

The housing market is in an tough situation right now: buyer demand has slowed, forcing sellers to lower prices. A lot of this dynamic is driven by interest rates. If the Fed were to suddenly drop the base rate by a dramatic margin, it would have a trickle down effect to mortgage rates. I suspect a lot of people aren't looking to buy right now simply due to mortgage rates higher than those in recent memory, and anecdotally I know several home owners who are hoping for interest rate cuts so they can refinance their current mortgages at a lower rate. I'm not so sure that a "collapse" of the housing market is on the horizon though because I believe so much of the current dynamic is being driven by interest rates that if any spookiness in the housing market were to occur, it could easily be remedied by just cutting rates. ~West

Lung cancer warning for foods which make up ‘half the average diet’ after new study (Independent)

Turns out the staple macros that make up half (yes, half) the average American diet—ultra-processed foods—doesn’t just give you dad bod and a colon that hates you… now they’re linked to lung cancer too. Which is impressive, considering most people thought you had to smoke for that. The study says folks pounding the most UPFs—think lunch meat, soda, instant noodles, pizza—were 41% more likely to get lung cancer. That’s after accounting for smokers too. Will anything change? Of course not. UPFs are cheap, shelf-stable, and make the plebs too docile to revolt. ~Zack

Lessons From the Rhodesian Bush War (Amazon)

I kept on my military history of Southern Africa theme this past week and read Lessons from the Rhodesian Bush War. It was an excellent read and in particular did a great job of illustrating how rural white farmers in Rhodesia defended their properties against ZANU and ZAPU incursions. Fences, booby traps, home-made vehicle weapon mounting systems, and convoy tactics were all covered. At a high level though, the book illustrated the moral decisions of the West at this unique period in time. Faced with the dilemma of supporting either a stable and competent, but explicitly racist, Rhodesian government, or a Marxist/Leninist majority-rule Zimbabwean government, the West chose the latter. Moral ambiguity was the rule of the day in Rhodesia, and the book covers both the daily realities and political controversies of the era.. ~West

Psilocybin delays aging, extends lifespan, new Emory study suggests (Emory University)

An Emory study found that psilocybin’s byproduct, psilocin, extended the lifespan of human skin and lung cells by over 50% in the lab. In mice, a monthly trip dose boosted survival by 30%, gave them shinier fur, fewer white hairs, and even some hair regrowth. Researchers say it works by reducing oxidative stress, fixing DNA damage, and preserving telomeres—the little caps on your chromosomes that fray as you age. Translation: magic mushrooms might slow the clock on a cellular level. Of course, this is still early-stage research. But if it holds up, the anti-aging industry is about to get a whole lot weirder. ~Zack

'There is no money': Argentina's Milei vetoes pension boost passed by Congress (Reuters)

Milei continues to be the leading example of fiscal conservatism in the modern world by vetoing a pension increase for Argentinians with disabilities, stating frankly, "There is no money." Governments not having any money normally isn't a short term impediment to politicians though, and increasing the money supply, and subsequently inflation, is the common way out. So what makes Argentina different? How can Milei get away with things that would never fly in most Western democracies? He has the unique advantage of having a voter base that is all too familiar with the scourge of hyper inflation, and knows the toll that printing money can have on a country. Whether a Milei-style figure could have success outside of a nation with Argentina's history of inflation and government incompetence is anyone's guess, but I'm unfortunately skeptical. It seems that hitting rock bottom is a prerequisite for sensible economic policy. ~West

The White Man Who Pretended to Be Black to Get Published (The Free Press)

^ That was nominated for an award for writers who are “making an impact in the online literary landscape.” You literally can’t make this up: a straight white Canadian dude decided the only way to get published was to tick every intersectional box on the DEI roster. So he rolled out a parade of fake personas… including a gender-fluid Nigerian poet named Adele Nwankwo, author of a lesbian WWE revenge fantasy about beating up “Pat Patriarchy.” Editors didn’t just publish it. They loved it. For two years, he kept the ruse going. 47 objectively terrible poems, all accepted because the author bio hit the jackpot. When he finally came clean, the outrage was instant, but obviously nothing about the work changed. It just stopped being “brave” the moment they found out who wrote it. ~Zack

PrivacyTools.Io

This is one of my favorite sites for finding privacy oriented alternatives to existing digital services. Most of the software I use in my daily life comes directly from the recommendations on PrivacyTools, and I'll review the site every few months to see if their guidance has changed. The biggest hurdle for most people looking to dramatically enhance their digital privacy is moving from Mac/Windows to a Linux OS, but nowadays these systems are pretty plug and play. If you have some proprietary software that you absolutely have to use, check if it is available on Linux, or consider a dual boot. ~West

That’s it for this week.

I’m not sure this week’s stories share a theme, except maybe this…

You’ve always got to look past the theater. The speeches, the headlines, the moral posturing. None of it tells you what’s really going on.

So stay sharp. Stay critical. And remember: the walrus was Paul.

Sic semper debitoribus
~ West & Zack

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