A group of fireflies is called a sparkle ✨

China’s collapsing job market just lost its ultimate safety net as the gig economy completely implodes. In a historic first, authorities in Shenzhen, the powerhouse megacity built on migrant labor, have formally declared the ride-hailing market completely saturated. An absolute flood of laid-off workers and desperate citizens has overwhelmed the sector, turning China's most reliable economic fallback option into a brutal financial trap. The official data reveals a dystopian reality. Nearly 400,000 licensed drivers in Shenzhen are now fighting over a shrinking pool of passengers, leaving the average driver with fewer than five completed trips per day. Exhausted workers are forced to grind through punishing 12- to 16-hour shifts just to scrape together a measly 300 yuan ($42) after corporate platform cuts, vehicle rentals, and charging costs. This crisis is rapidly spreading nationwide, with major hubs like Chongqing, Suzhou, and Dongguan forced to issue identical warnings or freeze permits altogether. For years, the Chinese Communist Party used gig work as a convenient sponge to soak up mass unemployment and hide the true scale of its failing economy. Now that manufacturing is dying, foreign investment is fleeing, and white-collar sectors are plagued by sweeping layoffs, that fragile cushion has completely disintegrated. #ChinaEconomy #Shenzhen #GigEconomy #CCP #Unemployment #Didi #ChinaCrisis #StateFailure

China’s collapsing job market just lost its ultimate safety net as the gig economy completely implodes. In a historic first, authorities in Shenzhen, the powerhouse megacity built on migrant labor, have formally declared the ride-hailing market completely saturated. An absolute flood of laid-off workers and desperate citizens has overwhelmed the sector, turning China's most reliable economic fallback option into a brutal financial trap. The official data reveals a dystopian reality. Nearly 400,000 licensed drivers in Shenzhen are now fighting over a shrinking pool of passengers, leaving the average driver with fewer than five completed trips per day. Exhausted workers are forced to grind through punishing 12- to 16-hour shifts just to scrape together a measly 300 yuan ($42) after corporate platform cuts, vehicle rentals, and charging costs. This crisis is rapidly spreading nationwide, with major hubs like Chongqing, Suzhou, and Dongguan forced to issue identical warnings or freeze permits altogether. For years, the Chinese Communist Party used gig work as a convenient sponge to soak up mass unemployment and hide the true scale of its failing economy. Now that manufacturing is dying, foreign investment is fleeing, and white-collar sectors are plagued by sweeping layoffs, that fragile cushion has completely disintegrated. #ChinaEconomy #Shenzhen #GigEconomy #CCP #Unemployment #Didi #ChinaCrisis #StateFailure

South Korean citizens marched and demonstrated, waving South Korean and American flags, to protest election fraud by the Lee Jae-myung administration!

Looking forward to talking about the impending Iran deal, on @NewsNation at 1:00 ET. Please watch. Thanks.

2026-6-13. Olympic Park. People demanding elections with no electronic voting/counting machine, 1 day vote, same day hand count. Other expressions related to defending a free Korea are present.

China officially declared the waters surrounding Taiwan, including the Taiwan Strait, as its "near-shore waters" or "coastal waters" (近海) for the first time on 11 June 2026. The Chinese Communist Party is setting up the (internally) legal premise for blockading Taiwan.

Breaking: The Trump admin has blocked all foreign access to Anthropic's most advanced AI models, crushing Beijing's strategy of stealing American tech. In a sudden move, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick issued an emergency mandate imposing strict export controls on Anthropic’s cutting-edge Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models. While U.S. policy has long prioritized keeping advanced tech away from China and other strategic adversaries, this specific order is a broad, global restriction. It mandates explicit government licensing for any foreign access, even for foreign persons or entities operating inside the United States. The immediate lockdown was triggered after a successful jailbreak of Mythos 5 exposed its alarming ability to discover thousands of software vulnerabilities, raising severe cyber and bioweapon risks. Interestingly, Anthropic itself has strongly advocated for tight controls on chips and models to maintain a U.S. lead over China. When the firm bypassed federal warnings and proceeded with its early June release anyway, the administration stepped in to secure the technology. This aggressive global restriction directly slams the door on Chinese actors, who have been documented attempting large-scale distillation attacks to clone capabilities from U.S. models, as well as evading past controls through smuggling and offshore access. By treating frontier AI as a controlled national security asset, the Trump admin is closing the exact gaps that the Chinese Communist Party exploits. #Anthropic #Mythos5 #Fable5 #AI #NationalSecurity #TechNews2026 #ExportControls #Geopolitics

I’m looking forward to talking with Rick Fowler on @WMALDC tomorrow, Saturday, at 6:50 AM ET on China and Iran matters. Please tune in. Thanks!