Brendan Sorsby has entered a gambling addiction program for sports betting, which could end his college career. The second paragraph of this story is remarkable.

The Australian mining industry is now on the verge of collapse due to diesel shortages. One of the country’s last two refineries is in flames, and the fuel supply chain that powers every drill, truck, and haul is about to snap. This isn’t an isolated incident. It’s the inevitable result of years of policy choices colliding with reality.

It's only Round 2, but this effort from @SwanDistrictsFC speedster Jackson McLachlan against East Perth on Saturday will take some beating for the EGT Goal of the Year. Well called by @rothy02 as well!

Got the wife evacuated, so have time to drink a tea and think about the Strait of Hormuz. I've sailed through the it a few times years ago and done antipiracy operations in the Strait of Malacca. Maps can be deceiving. The best way to think about the Strait of Hormuz is a four lane highway, with two lanes per direction for the largest ships like crude carriers, cargo vessels, and warships in the center of the channel where it is deepest and free of obstacles. Then on the outside of those lanes, you have medium sized ships, going Jebel Ali to other regional ports like Sohar, since a lot of international cargo goes direct to Jebel Ali then is cross loaded across the region. On the outside of those lanes, along both coasts, are dhow fishing boats and all manner of local, smaller craft. Maritime trade crisscrossing this region goes back hundreds of years. The Portugese wrote how disappointing it was to find a tight network of trade already established in the region when they arrived in the 15th century. It is hard to describe how crowded these waters are. You sometimes wonder if you could walk to Iran across the decks of ships and not get your feet wet. The amount of traffic makes distinguishing between normal traffic and a threat incredibly difficult. Is that dhow fishing, transiting between coasts, laying mines, gathering intelligence, or a tender for surface drones? Hard to discern while sailing ducks in a row escorting a lumbering tanker or cargo ship. Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea proved to be a Houthi victory when a land power with no navy to speak of fought the most powerful navy on earth to an agreement. The Hormuz problem is harder now the Iranians have proved they have the will to fight, no matter how much pain is leveled at them from afar. The shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz go around the Musandam penninsula. This turn exposes ships to 270 degree of fire control in layered systems from Qeshm, the surrounding high ground, to further inland, with surface drones now added to the mix. Iran doesn't need to mine the entire strait. Iran just needs to turn that main shipping lanes around Musandam into a kill box and divert approved ships past Qeshm, out of the main shipping lanes like a watery weigh station. It has started doing this. The U.S. has created a hard problem for itself. NATO understandably wants nothing to do with this. If the most powerful navy in the world can't solve this, what difference does European navies make. With the watery weigh station past Qeshm, Iran isn't closing the strait to global commerce. It is simply doing what the U.S. does with the dollar, exerting power over the chokepoint it controls. Understandably the U.S. doesn't like this, so why can't the U.S. just send warships to escort ships through? Well, when you escort a ship through a strait, you tend to stay ducks in a row. So if warships are sent to escort tankers, they are now just another target in the strait. Even if the warships could maneuver through local traffic to screen ships, lets go back to the 270 degree turn around the penninsula. The warships would be receiving layered waves of fire likely worse than they faced off with in the Red Sea against the Houthis from essentially three directions while having the longer route to run to protect the tankers around the peninsula. As the Hormuz Crisis drags on, anything less than breaking Iran's control of the strait will be seen as a loss for the U.S., much like the Battle of the Red Sea was against the Houthis.

The world is moving toward bifurcation, and the consequences for commodities, currencies and supply chains are enormous. Huw McKay spent years as Chief Economist at BHP and is one of the most respected thinkers in global commodities. He joins us to discuss: • Reserve currencies, debasement and the real limits of hard money • Australia’s unique boom, commodity pricing and copper’s structural tightness • Glencore's complexity, sanctions, logistics math • Bifurcation, shipping routes and war scenarios YT → youtu.be/WPj57TWZW7A Spotify → open.spotify.com/episode/5Gj…

Goosebumps! People often ask, is Shakespeare still relevant? Here is a great example, from the Steven Colbert Show, in which Sir Ian McKellen delivers an extraordinary speech. Shakespeare’s words are timeless, urgent and important. #Shakespeare #ianmckellen #stevencolbert

jaw dropped at the sight of this picture in the excellent WaPo Anthropic story from the other day: " ... a book warehouse that was alleged to play a role in Anthropic’s Project Panama, its project to scan, digitize and destroy millions of books"

We'll save Australia Don't wanna hurt no kangaroo We'll build an All American amusement park there They got surfin' too (Randy knew in 1972; amusement park = mines) youtu.be/4QbUSjnhv6M?si=pQHX…

Extraordinary. Links mining; refining; manufacturing; technology; skills; criticality; control; capital; consumers & competing priorities. China unitary state. The West squabbling tribes. Finance/Industry/Defence/Climate - can't have it all. 😱@moneyofminepod @ttmygh @kofinas

Geopolitics is no longer background noise in mining, it is the main event. In this episode we sit down with Tomasz Nadrowski, whose framework for critical minerals investing starts with one assumption, the world is splitting into two. We cover the export control regime, the collapse of globalized value chains, why Western capital keeps flowing the wrong way, and what this all means for rare earths, gallium, graphite, copper and more. If you want to understand the new map of commodity investing, this one is worth your time. YouTube → youtu.be/IHjIYyXEUOY Spotify → open.spotify.com/episode/4Ff…

1960s Britain, a place where smartly dressed chaps spent their days in the countryside making cricket bats. 🏏 ⏳️