Every headline event — a war, a rate decision, a missile fired at a container ship — has an obvious, first-order consequence. This is a small notebook about the second one: the fuel bill, the market crash, the rerouted parcel, the rupee that quietly loses ten percent of its value while everyone is watching something else. I started keeping these notes to make sense of things I was reading about anyway, and this is where I've put them in order.

• September 9, 2026

  The Clouds I Used to Watch Are Now Somebody's Dataset

  A slight deviation. On how satellite cloud-pattern data and machine learning now forecast renewable energy output, and how a bad forecast in Germany turned into a €900-per-megawatt-hour power price.

• September 2, 2026

  Your 'AITA' Prompt Didn't Need an AI to Answer It. My Next iPhone Bill Needed It Even Less.

  DRAM prices nearly doubled in a single quarter as AI data centres absorbed the world's memory chip supply. Apple called it "a hundred-year flood." Here's how that reaches your next phone.

• August 26, 2026

  Gold, Silver, and the Question of Which Order Effect This Actually Is

  Gold hit $5,589 an ounce in January. Silver hit $83.62 in December, up over 180% in a year. On when a second-order effect gets big enough to become a cause of its own.

• August 19, 2026

  The Strait Everyone Depends On and No One Controls

  A 33-kilometre channel carries a fifth of the world's oil and a fifth of its LNG. In 2026, it effectively closed for months, and Singapore, India, and the global price of everything felt it.

• August 5, 2026

  The World's Most Expensive City, in the Most Expensive Year

  Singapore tied New York for the world's priciest city in the same stretch it absorbed a war in Europe, a Fed on the warpath, and a shipping crisis in the Red Sea. A look back at how it all landed in one place.

• July 7, 2026

  The Long Way Round: How a Missile in the Red Sea Rerouted My Parcel

  Houthi attacks in the Red Sea sent hundreds of ships around the Cape of Good Hope instead. Fourteen days, one million dollars a voyage, and a very confused delivery tracker later, here's what that detour actually cost.

• May 26, 2026

  Three Million Cars That Weren't Built: Notes on the Chip Shortage

  A shortage of a component worth a few dollars idled car factories worldwide and quietly rewired how showrooms, waitlists, and used-car prices work — a lesson in how thin the buffer really is.

• April 14, 2026

  The Fed Sneezes, Emerging Markets Catch Cold: A World Priced in Dollars

  Six rate hikes in Washington in 2022, and currencies from Ankara to Colombo fell apart. The rupee's 11% decline was one of the calmer cases on a much longer list.

• March 3, 2026

  When Gas Becomes a Weapon: Europe's Scramble for LNG and the Bills It Left Behind

  Europe's dash to replace Russian gas sent Asian LNG prices past $84 per unit in a single day. It shows up as scheduled blackouts in Pakistan, a nationalised utility in Germany, and a CNG receipt in Mumbai.

• January 20, 2026

  The Barrel and the Pump: How a War in Europe Shaped a Fuel Bill Thousands of Miles Away

  India buys less than 2% of its crude from Russia. That didn't stop a war three thousand kilometres away from wiping ₹13 lakh crore off Indian markets in a single session. Here's the chain.