My grandparents risked everything to immigrate here... My parents were the first in their families to become educated professionals, brought us up to the middle class... I have large shoes to fill... Its my job to take this bloodline to the next level... Financial freedom!

We're nearing the end of era, Grace is still young & she won't like what comes next. For more than a century, wealthy "progressives" (really Marxists if they are at all intellectually aware), have been able to live the best of both worlds - but no more, an inflection point 1/

Socialism is the flat earth theory of economics.

BREAKING: The U.S. appears to have ended its military presence in Syria with the last convoy leaving the Qasrak base in the northeast. Control of the area is now shifting to Syrian forces. This effectively ends the U.S. ground presence that began in 2014.

Thought some of you might appreciate this long form answer I sent to a friend in another chat last week about Iran This is what she asked: "Where exactly we are winning? Removing all emotional semantics from Easter and things like that, practically how is this going to help America?" My response: 1) Iran has created a risk premium on global oil markets that has raised the cost of literally everything in the entire world. Oil should be a flat, boring market and <$50. If they were to get a nuclear weapon, which they were incontrovertibly close to getting, they would be able to further amplify that risk premium. With their ballistic missiles they would be able to threaten also the straights of malacca, suez, and Gibraltar along with hormuz. That would be a hijacking of most of the most important chokepoints in the world, in one of the most important sectors for energy in the world. 2) China's blue water navy requires a very dense type of oil that only comes out of a handful of places in the world, Venezuela and Iran being two of them. China has been getting this oil at a major discount due to US sanctions from these countries and it has given China a strategic advantage over the United States. Trump took control of Venezuelen oil when he overthrew Maduro, and with Iran next now China's navy is now basically constrained in operations by the US' control over their fuel sources. We are not depriving them of oil but they are paying more now and we can control the amount they receive, so they are unable to have an autonomous navy. 3) The constant threat of Iran and Israel nuking each other creates instability in the oil market, which creates opportunities for financial arbitrage in comex and insurance premiums through Lloyds of London - both of which are dominated by the City of London. This has been one of the major ways the "hidden empire" has continued to profit and control world affairs. The IRGC is not a sovereign entity in reality but a puppet of this Empire; Iran is heavily tied behind the scenes to both the UK and France. This is why you saw so much issue with these countries getting involved in Iran, to the extent that they deprived the US of airspace and key bases like Diego Garcia, compared to their bloodlust in Ukraine. Removing the IRGC and having oil flow to a new civilian government, with the US taking a small tax in compensation (like in Venezuela) will ultimately bring stability to the region and benefit the US financially. For years the US navy has paid to keep the straights secure and the UK has been profiting from it - no more. 4) The United States doesn't actually need the straight open because we are the biggest oil producer in the world now, bigger than the next 3 countries combined. The oil from the straight mostly goes to Europe and Asia. WTI (American oil index) actually fell beneath Brent recently, which is the is the British financialized index, and Brent will eventually stop being relevant. It is obvious the US has been in no hurry to reopen the straight because it hurts our adversaries, China and the EU/UK, much more than us. This has given us leverage especially on Europe on natural gas as since the destruction of Nordstream by Ukraine, they are dependent on LNG. The destruction of qatars terminals has put them in a bind - where can they get it from? Only the US, which has tons of natural gas and will have substantially more export terminals online by the end of the decade. We are essentially using the closure of the straight to exert more leverage on Europe via being the only seller for their energy. The same goes for EU and China when it comes to Helium exports which are required for semi-conductors. Notice that Russia has not gotten involved and has been tepid in its support for Iran. That is because this war is predominantly harming Europe, by design. It is bankrupting them, making it hard for them to control their bond spreads and maintain domestic control while pursuing their agendas (note the abrupt backtracking on migration across many euro countries just in the past couple weeks). Also notice how it put Europe in a situation where by not helping the US they have given Trump the pretext to leave NATO, something I think is extremely likely at this point. Russia is meanwhile making TONS of money from the war through the raised oil prices. It has also served a secondary objective of keeping China in check and more dependent on Russia, something that had shifted the opposite direction after the Ukraine War. 5) Israel's role in this is fairly simple: they view Iran as an existential threat to them, which is somewhat plausible as Iran has not proven itself rhetorically (it has a fatalistic version of islam) or otherwise to be a rational actor. Netanyahu also hates the IRGC with his own deranged passion, and it's plausible that if the US did not get involved Israel would have nuked Iran preemptively. We absolutely do not want this. I think it is fair to suggest that Israel's objectives have accordingly impacted the operational tempo to an extent. Israel also does not care about expanding the war which creates a frustration behind the scenes between the two governments, something obvious if you are paying attention. We have had to tell Israel many times to stand down on making certain escalatory attacks on refineries etc. The neocons in Congress are very upset already Trump is allowing the current negotiations to move forward. Personally, I do not think Trump is negotiating with the IRGC so much as the civilian government and military, but time will shake all this out. At any rate, the point is that Israel and the US can be allies while not having the exact same reasons for going to war. There are major, major reasons Trump is making the moves he is making, and indeed in the order he is making them in. Note that Venezuela is currently operating at the highest production in years since we took that piece off the board in January, just in time for this fight. The end of Iran's regime will lead to the end of Zelensky next and I believe this will ultimately collapse the democratic party at home. Venezuela, Iran, and Ukraine are the cabal's primary proxy states where trafficking and money laundering were taking place. As these cash inflows collapse the cabal's money to fund operations will dry up. It's worth noting that Obama gave Iran 160 billion dollars before he left office, much of it in cash. What was this for really? And where did Iran's Uranium come from - was it the same Uranium from Clinton's "Uranium One" fiasco that disappeared? Much to think about, because there is much more to this than meets the eye. More I could say but I think this gives the big picture view of things.

His wife fled Canada to save her life from stage 4 ovarian cancer 2.5 years ago. Canada said assisted su1c1de (MAID) was her only "option" Wanna guess how she is doing now that she has proper healthcare in the USA?

BREATHTAKING🚨: WOW! NASA just dropped this view of the moon’s far side!

3 weeks ago I argued the US goal in Iran is to seize the global oil spigot. Venezuela in January -> Iran in February. Neutralize every supply channel outside the dollar system within 90 days. Achieve a compliant successor government and complete energy dominance. The oil thesis was the obvious layer. However, when you zoom out & view the last four years as a single sequence rather than isolated geopolitical events, the architecture of the grander US plan becomes visible. 1st was Europe, which laid the groundwork. The Ukraine conflict provided the justification for sanctions that collapsed Russian pipeline gas from 150 billion cubic meters to 40. Then Nordstream was destroyed, which rewired the entire European energy system permanently. The US went from supplying 28% of Europe's LNG in 2021 to 58% by 2025, exporting a record 111 million MTs, the 1st country in history to break 100 MT. Europe was transformed from a customer with options into a captive market now purchasing its survival in USD. 2nd was Syria. The fall of Assad severed the critical node connecting China's Belt & Road Initiative to the Mediterranean. The trilateral railway linking Iran, Iraq & Syria, designed to bypass Western maritime chokepoints, was completely destroyed. This isolated Iran geographically & cleared the path for what came next. 3rd was Venezuela. In January the US effectively took control of the world's largest heavy crude reserves. The US Gulf Coast has the most advanced refining complex on earth, specifically built for heavy sour crude. Phillips 66, Valero & the rest are now positioned to process hundreds of thousands of barrels of Venezuelan crude daily. The US captured a massive strategic reserve & solidified its position as the dominant exporter of refined petroleum products, an industry worth $110 billion in 2025 alone. Venezuela & Iran were the two major oil supply channels that existed outside the dollar system. Both produce heavy crude sold primarily to China & evaded US financial supervision. Both now being neutralized within 90 days, which leads us to.. 4th is Iran & the Middle East energy shock. Israel struck Iran's South Pars gas field, the world's largest natural gas reservoir. Iran retaliated against Qatar's Ras Laffan, the single largest LNG facility on earth, responsible for a fifth of global supply. QatarEnergy's own assessment is that 17% of export capacity is gone and recovery will take up to 5 years. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. European gas prices spiked 70%. Asian spot prices doubled. The only remaining scaled supplier? The United States. If Iran falls & a successor government is installed that the US controls or influences (the Delcy model described weeks ago) then roughly 40 to 45 million barrels per day of global production out of 103 million is effectively under US control. OPEC becomes irrelevant because the US coalition is now the marginal producer. Now add the gas dimension & it goes beyond oil. This war is solidifying the petrodollar system as it evolves into a hybrid petro/LNG-dollar. The old system was built on Saudi crude priced in USD. The new system is built on American crude plus American gas from the Gulf Coast, with no alternative supplier of comparable scale. The dependency is deeper because LNG infrastructure requires long term contracts & regasification terminals that lock buyers into supply relationships for decades. Europe & the Pacific allies (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) cannot pivot away as there is nowhere left to pivot to. They're now locked into the US energy system. The market confirms this. DXY went from 96 to 101. Gold down ~20% from its January all time high. Bitcoin down 20% on the year. Brent above $100. European & Asian institutions are liquidating precious metals and crypto to buy dollars because they need dollars to buy the only remaining scaled energy supply. The world is selling its gold to buy American energy in American currency. The dollar is now being weaponized through energy dependency. The structural repricing is happening regardless of how the conflict resolves. But the US grand strategy goes deeper.. Artificial intelligence is a physical industry. It runs on power and chips. Data centers require massive uninterrupted baseload electricity, primarily provided by natural gas. Semiconductor fabrication requires helium & rare earths. By choking the Strait of Hormuz & crippling Middle Eastern LNG & helium production, the US is systematically degrading China's ability to power its data centers & fabricate semiconductors at scale. The US is energy self sufficient, especially with newly captured Venezuelan reserves & expanding Gulf Coast capacity running on domestic gas. On the other hand, China is import dependent & every joule it imports effectively now transits chokepoints the US Navy controls.. Iran was the Belt & Road's overland energy bypass, the corridor that allowed China to mitigate the Malacca Trap. With Iran neutralized that corridor is severed. China faces a world where its compute infrastructure competes for scraps on a depleted global LNG market, while American data centers run at full capacity on domestic energy. Russia is next in the sequence. A post-war Iran reopening under US influence competes directly with Russia for the same refineries in China & India at lower cost. Iran's production costs are lower. Russia loses its last structural advantage in heavy crude & its economic lifeline. Additionally, under the Iran war cover, Ukraine has been opportunistically destroying Russian energy infrastructure & all signs point towards Russia being at the end of the line. The message from Washington becomes very simple: we dismantled two regimes in three months, your economy is about to get crushed, sign the Ukraine deal. Then Trump sits down with Xi holding every card. Complete energy dominance. The hybrid petro/LNG-dollar fortified, Iran cleared, Russia cornered, & China facing the Malacca Trap fully closed with no remaining energy bypass. Israel & the GCC are absorbing the kinetic cost of a conflict whose primary beneficiary, counter to the mainstream narrative, is actually America (First). Qatar offline for 5 years reprices the entire global gas market in favor of US exporters for the remainder of the decade. The Gulf states face years of rebuilding. Europe faces its 2nd energy crisis in four years. Sure, the average American might face temporary moderate inflation & higher gas prices. But if you are the architect of the US empire & you view the rise of China & Chinese ASI as an existential winner takes all scenario, the collateral damage is acceptable cost. Whoever controls the energy corridors controls the monetary system. Whoever controls the monetary system & the energy supply simultaneously controls the compute infrastructure that determines which civilization builds ASI first. The US is seizing all 3.

Spanish girl gets brutally gang-raped by migrants, ends up paralyzed and developing severe PTSD. The Spanish government offers her assisted suicide as a solution to all of those problems. IDK if that counts as a metaphor because they're doing it literally.

"je comprends pas pourquoi Elon Musk fait des fusées." Je me rappelle une conversation avec un ami qui m'avait dit ça. C'est assez typique. La majorité des gens voient ça sous le prisme du délire de milliardaire. Le mec a trop d'argent, il sait plus quoi en faire, alors il joue à la conquête spatiale. C'est le récit confortable. Celui qui permet de pas se poser de questions. Sauf que c'est à complètement à côté de la plaque. Musk a raconté dans une interview qu'après avoir lu les philosophes allemands, en pleine quête de sens, il était tombé dans un nihilisme total. Et que ce qui l'en avait sorti, c'était pas une réponse philosophique. C'était une mission. Rendre l'humanité multiplanétaire. Accélérer la transition énergétique. Pas parce que c'est rationnel au sens comptable. Parce que c'est la seule chose qui donne un sens suffisamment grand pour se lever chaque matin. Les fusées c'est pas un caprice. C'est une réponse existentielle. Et quand tu regardes l'histoire, c'est toujours comme ça que ça a fonctionné. Colomb avait zéro garantie de trouver quoi que ce soit. Les frères Wright construisaient un truc que 99% des scientifiques trouvaient impossible. Apollo 11 c'était envoyer des mecs dans une boîte en métal vers un caillou à 384 000 km. À chaque fois la majorité trouvait ça absurde. À chaque fois c'est exactement ces projets qui ont redéfini les limites du possible. Terafab c'est dans cette lignée. Et quelqu'un de sain d'esprit ne peut que s'enthousiasmer devant autant d'ambition. Le vrai problème c'est qu'on vit dans une époque qui éduque ses gamins dans l'autoflagellation. Le monde va mal, tout s'effondre, voyez petit. Alors qu'objectivement, sur quasi tous les indicateurs, le monde n'a jamais été aussi bien. Notre crise c'est pas une crise de ressources. C'est une crise de sens. Et on devrait éduquer les gamins à inventer le futur, pas à avoir honte d'exister.

I should be clearer re how I view what’s happening: A. I do not think this all ends cleanly in a week. That’s delusional. I do think the U.S. is ahead of their own expected timeline but is still very much at risk of terror attacks or blown up tankers. B. I however also completely disagree that regime change is impossible without boots on the ground in a world where the U.S. has precise targeting and Israel is willing to do its dirty work while the U.S. provides overwatch C. I disagree that elevated oil prices are a certainty and instead view oil prices as a lever that the admin can now control more precisely with the ability to make things very painful for whichever major energy importers at will. D. I disagree with the framing that the American voter is the ultimate loser if energy prices spike as there are levers to pull to mitigate the impact as I and others have outlined before. E. This is all about decoupling which is the only reason the admin is taking this kind of risk. Regardless of whatever bullshit about Epstein and AIPAC your favorite podcaster is spewing i still believe that people like Bessent, Rubio and Vance only care about the American interest. Isreal is a useful ally in this endeavor but the endeavor was undertaken due to a broader playbook. F. I think this is all about decoupling and we are systemically grabbing the levers of global trade into a divorce with China. G. On the way to decoupling the west from China we still need to beat Europe, India and South Korea into submission. They agreed to trade deals with transshipment clause but they haven’t yet been asked to enforce it. When it’s time we need a really dam heavy stick. I’ve outlined what that looks like. Think of access to ME energy as another arrow in the quiver. H. I also believe this endeavor was not embarked on without first getting the Gulf States on-sides. We had to offer them something China couldn’t - long term security with the permanent removal of the destabilizing actor in the region. In return when divorce comes they will be on sides. They will throttle energy when needed. They will price energy in dollars. They will give Trump pools of capital to offset weaponization of financialization as countries try to dump stocks and bonds to fight the transhipment enforcement. I. And finally we have preemptively defanged a Taiwan invasion. In addition to the obvious loss of fabs and breakout of the first island chain the biggest issue with a successful invasion of Taiwan is it would demonstrate that American overwatch is a paper tiger. Trump has successfully demonstrated to the world that Americas military is lethal and valuable to have as an ally. Yes we need to ramp production rates of drones and interceptors - which we are doing - and yes China is downstream of some of our supply lines which we are addressing - but if we let Xi take Taiwan it won’t be as disastrous as it would have been in an alternate world where the last thing the American military did was botch a withdrawal from Afghanistan. I still think we can amicably split the world into spheres. I still think decoupling is the goal. But first we need to crush Europe and Canada before we ultimately pull the west away from China. 🫡

The arguments about Iran are so polarised that no one wants to admit that several things are true at once: You'd be a fool not to have serious reservations about the idea of a regime change war, especially in the Middle East. You'd also be a fool to allow terrorist-funding lunatics to develop nuclear weapons. Neither the people condemning these strikes, nor the people cheering them on know how this is going to work out. So far, Trump Administration interventions have been extraordinarily successful in achieving valid objectives within a highly limited scope. The strikes on Iran during the 12 day war achieved destruction of several nuclear facilities. The Venezuela operation decapitated the hostile regime and replaced Maduro with a non-hostile leader. Both also achieved significant "don't fuck with us" deterrence globally. However, it is not remotely clear at this moment in time whether something similar can be achieved in Iran. I understand and fully empathise with the people who think regime change is not going to work in Iran and you'll end up with the same as what you had or worse. And I understand just as much the people who celebrate an evil dictator being killed and Iran's nuclear and military assets being degraded further. The thing we do not know, and the thing that will determine whether this has all been worth it, is what the future leadership of Iran will look like. This seems to me to be the biggest risk Donald Trump has taken at any time in his first or second term. If it pays off, the reward both domestically and globally will be huge. If it doesn't and things go south, it could derail his Presidency and define his legacy like Iraq did for Blair and Bush. Very few people have any idea which of these scenarios is more likely and one thing is for sure: none of them are talking about it on social media because they're all sitting in command bunkers, not on X. I hope the people of Iran are released from living under tyranny. I hope the peoples of the Middle East can live in peace. I hope the takeaway for any would-be terrorist is the realisation that October 7 might not have been such a good idea. I hope that with the Middle East stabilised, the US can turn its attentions to the theatres that really matters to the security of the West: Russia and China. Whether any of that happens remains to be seen and it seems the hardest thing for anyone to do is to not express an opinion before the smoke has cleared.

Classic

I think the world has grown too comfortable, to the point where one is sometimes forced to understand why Trump pursues certain actions. How else can one explain an organisation of nearly 200 members claiming it is going broke simply because one member is rethinking how much burden it should carry? I believe Trump is a long-awaited reality check for the world we have become accustomed to.

Hopefully President Xi will call out all of the human rights abuses happening in Britain.

Helen Andrews drops a provocative thesis: Feminization = wokeness. Everything we call "woke"—empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition, inclusion over free speech—is just the natural outcome of institutions becoming majority-female since the 1970s. She points to surveys: ~2/3 men prioritize free speech, ~2/3 women prioritize inclusive society. Men lean "ethics of justice" (rules/facts), women "ethics of caring" (context/relationships/emotions). Examples: James Damore fired not for facts but because it made women "feel bad." Kavanaugh hearings: masculine side demanded evidence, feminine side focused on "she's crying." Her take: When women predominate, politics/institutions tilt toward subjective feelings over objective rules—even if many women reject it (e.g., best Kavanaugh books by women critics). This 2:46 clip is bold, polarizing, and ties demographic shifts to cultural ones. Agree it's a key driver of wokeness? Or overreach? What's your read on the gender gaps in free speech/inclusion polls?

This is why Democrats are panicking about immigration enforcement. The Electoral College baseline favors Republicans, census math is shifting EVs to red states, and Democrats are losing voter registration ground. Remove illegal immigration from the equation and the math gets brutal fast.

Europe stands no chance against the US. It will be eaten alive. And it is not even because of its decadence. It is just that the US has ALWAYS been more efficient, creative and ambitious. The US is the West on steroids, it is the latest version of the software and Europe has no update available to compete. The United States holds a fundamental advantage because it functions as a single, massive engine. While Europe is a collection of 27 different countries with different languages and laws, the U.S. is one giant market where a company can scale to hundreds of millions of people instantly. This massive scale creates a "winner-take-all" dynamic that Europe simply cannot match. Because the U.S. has more capital and a culture that rewards high-risk bets, it has become a vacuum that sucks up the world’s best talent and resources, leaving Europe to manage a fragmented and slower system. In the world of technology, this gap is even more obvious. The U.S. philosophy is to build first and ask for permission later, which is why it leads in every major field from AI to aerospace. Europe, on the other hand, has become a "regulatory superpower" rather than an innovation superpower. While American companies are busy creating the future, European bureaucrats are busy writing rules for it. This puts Europe in a permanent defensive position—it is trying to govern a world that it no longer has the power to build. Energy and security also play a decisive role in this divergence. The U.S. has transformed itself into an energy superpower, producing its own oil and gas to keep its industries cheap and competitive. Meanwhile, Europe remains dependent on others for its energy and relies on the American military for its safety. This reliance has caused Europe’s own strategic "muscles" to waste away. Without its own energy or the ability to defend itself, Europe effectively functions as a subsidiary of the American system rather than a true competitor. Ultimately, the two have chosen different paths. Europe has become a "lifestyle superpower," focusing on social safety nets, vacations, and preserving the past. The U.S. remains a "growth superpower," focused on efficiency, ambition, and the future. In a hyper-competitive global economy, a lifestyle-focused system cannot survive without a growth-focused engine to support it. Without a massive "software update" to its core culture and economy, Europe will likely continue to fade, eventually being overtaken by the sheer speed and raw power of the American model. But this is very unlikely. Europe stands no chance.

Pay attention. The real truth behind what Trump is doing.

Travelling to America as an Australian is terrifying. Because living in Australia, we're sheltered. We're far from the rest of the world. Our State Sponsored Media tells you that Australia has the best of everything in the world. That our culture and lifestyle is unmatched. But as soon as you arrive in America it is blindingly obvious how false that is. America feels explosive, alive, chaotic, rich. It's loud, obnoxious, unapologetic. There's no hint of tall poppy syndrome. And no constant nagging of the Nanny State. America is accelerating into an unknown future without fear. There are so many technological innovations here that would never see the light of day in Australia, because they would be strangled by regulation. Australia is beautiful, sure. But it's safe, quiet, controlled. Media and society tell you to conform, comply, be seen and not heard. Take the safe option. Be fearful of new things. Be fearful of the future. The spark of innovation is stifled. The light of creativity is discouraged. The warmth of the collective is more important than the rugged individual. And as time goes on, one of the two countries is going to be left behind. It's pretty clear which country that is. So, it's terrifying. And before I came here, everyone said I should be terrified of America. That I wouldn't be let it the country. That everyone is rioting. That Hitler runs the country. That couldn't be further from the truth. Their brains have been absolutely fried by Australian State Sponsored media.