Brett Watson

I’m already on the propane and propane accessories committee and the ad hoc task force to conduct the feasibility study on a department foosball table (scoping study benefit cost ratio estimated at 5:1).

Today I got to celebrate my UAA tenure and promotion. Very grateful for friends, family, and my professional network for their support over the years.

Kevin and I have not discussed this to coordinate the market, but my house is amazingly renting for the same nightly rate.

Ruh roh

My favorite genre of panelist commentary: "The streets are full of $20 bills. To date, the (N=large) working groups/commissions/task forces we have assembled to figure out how to pick them up have failed, but task force N+1, with the 'right people' is really gonna crack this."

Recessionary indicator or Hacienda coupon?

AI does have some good use cases!

If I get to pick the 30 minutes, this deal only has upside.

I know.

Need a Letter Box style user review site for vaccines.
Here’s my contribution:

“MMR vax has been great. Got it and the boosters at the recommended ages and have been Measles, Mumps, and Rubella free ever since!”

The government picking me as a winner: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!!

The government picking me as a loser: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

Nationalizing small but strategically critical industries is a reasonable approach. The efficiency gains foregone just can’t be big enough to matter in the context of some of these markets.

Not helping, but this is being primarily driven by structural factors (in-state labor required for processing) and cyclical factors (abundance and non-tariff price factors).

Alaska's manufacturing employment in May was 9,200 jobs, the lowest level of May employment in that industry in at least 24 years. Seafood getting pummeled.

Do interest rates have anything to do with oil prices or nah?

While building costs have only ever had limited explanatory power over US housing prices, even these imperfect correlations have weakened further in recent decades, from Brian Potter and Chad Syverson https://www.nber.org/papers/w33958

“And when every mineral is critical…”

Alaska’s production tax was setup in the world where the state was the resource owner. Tax credits for the production tax were offset with revenue from royalties. But marginal barrels are now on fed not state land and our tax code probably needs a rethink under this new regime.

Sorry we missed you last night!

Not a fan of the Chilli’s Triple Dipper?

Hear that AKLeg, tax Kevin!

When you walked into my office in early February of 2020 telling me to go to the store to stock beer and rice while wearing an N-95, that was a good leading indicator.

Meanwhile, on the west coast:

Man. That correlation is not great.

Alaska, rich in petroleum, faces an energy shortage Alaska produces a lot of crude oil, but many of the state’s utilities, businesses and homes run on natural gas, which is in dwindling supply near population centers.

I have a new piece out today in The Conversation about Alaska LNG. I have more to say about this issue, but these are some of my high level thoughts for a national audience.

Still need a few more months of hard data before we can get a clear picture of what the macro impacts of the escalated tariffs are.

Seems like there’s a potential solution to this problem that involves creating a new inland CDQ group.

Interesting stats on attendance at United Methodist Churches in Alaska.

1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but
2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but
3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So
4. Now the LLM code points to malware.