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

On my radar now

The weekend ledger reads the same way it has all summer: energy is running the economy. Oil finished Friday near $88.50 Brent, up almost 6 percent on the week, after drones hit two tankers trying to exit the Strait of Hormuz. That fed straight into the American consumer, who pulled back hard. July retail sales fell 0.6 percent, the worst month in over a year, and consumer sentiment dropped to 51, with households now expecting 4.3 percent inflation a year out. Stocks shrugged most of it off, with the S&P 500 slipping 0.17 percent Friday to 7,785.76 but still booking a third straight weekly gain, while bitcoin sagged to about $62,600 as the 10 year yield climbed to 4.66 percent. In AI, the price war got louder in both directions: Google cut Gemini 3.7 Flash to half its predecessor's rate, and DeepSeek quadrupled its V4 Pro output price on the same day. Researchers also published the first credible account of a near autonomous AI agent crew running a four day breach of Taiwan government systems. Restaurants stayed squeezed from both ends, with cattle inventories at their smallest since 1951 and diesel at a record $5.40 a gallon. Locally, New Hampshire lawmakers vote Wednesday on overriding Governor Ayotte's veto of the 10 year transportation plan, and national Democrats formally pushed the Granite State out of the leadoff primary slot for 2028.