Field notes from a restaurant floor, a trading screen, and a lot of unfinished software.

On my radar now

Stocks closed a third straight winning week even after Friday's dip, but the mood underneath is split: July inflation cooled to 3.4 percent while consumer sentiment fell off a cliff to 51.0 and one-year inflation expectations climbed to 4.3 percent. Oil is stuck near $88 Brent with Strait of Hormuz talks going nowhere, which keeps a floor under fuel and delivery costs. In AI, IBM tied itself to OpenAI for enterprise work, Google shipped a cheaper coding model, and OpenAI previewed an API tier running 14 times faster on Cerebras silicon. Restaurants had a rough week: 26,100 jobs gone in July, a jalapeno salmonella outbreak now at 345 cases across 27 states, and six chains slated to close hundreds of units. Locally, New Hampshire lawmakers head to a Wednesday veto showdown over turnpike tolls, the state's median home price set a record at $580,000, and Nashua's Planning Board green lit the $140 million Gate City Casino Hotel.