AI hyperscalers have topped out US debt markets and are now globalising liabilities to allied capital markets so pensioners worldwide can enjoy the coming implosion of credit collapse.

new waste: Η οικονομική σύζευξη των 7 πλανητών πίσω από το αστερισμό του κριού (μέρος 2ο), η γαμημένη σύζευξη techiechan.com/?p=4179

Iranian ForMin spox quotes Simone Weil to explain the dialectics of US hegemonic decline. But AI will save the west by creating slop to win the imaginary wall. At the same time oil reserves are drained. Iranians will keep philosophising as they wait our collapse

Fidelity threatening to ban retail traders for flipping SpaceX in the IPO is so wild to me Since when is flipping such a bad thing?

Liberal imperialism in one headline.

Interesting calculations concerning Iranian oil revenues AND at sea oil being gradually sold. @plm203 I think this gives another oil buffer :)

Tell me you dont know shit about nuclear weapons without telling me you know nothing about the subject

Big Tech just ran out of money building AI and what they're doing to cover it up should be illegal. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are spending a combined $700 BILLION this year on AI infrastructure. This eats up 94% of their total operating cash flow. The richest companies in human history are almost broke. And instead of slowing down, they're covering it up with the biggest financial engineering operation since 2008: Google just sold $80 billion in stock to fund AI infrastructure. That was their first equity raise in 20 YEARS. The last time Google needed to sell stock, YouTube didn't even exist. Sundar Pichai admitted the thing keeping him up at night is "compute capacity." The company that prints $100 billion a year in ad revenue just told Wall Street it isn't enough anymore. Amazon's free cash flow is projected to go NEGATIVE this year for the first time ever. Morgan Stanley estimates a $17 billion deficit and Bank of America says $28 billion. The most profitable logistics machine on Earth is about to burn more cash than it generates, and they quietly filed with the SEC saying they may need to raise even more debt and equity to keep building. All four hyperscalers are now borrowing hundreds of billions in bonds to keep the AI buildout alive. These were the most cash-rich companies in human history, and they're leveraging themselves to the teeth to build infrastructure that nobody has proven will generate enough revenue to pay for itself. And the cracks are already starting to show: Broadcom makes the custom AI chips that power Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic. This week their AI revenue TRIPLED year over year, sales grew 48%, and profits smashed every Wall Street estimate. The reward for all of that was $320 billion in value erased in a single trading session. Their CEO Hock Tan went on the earnings call and exposed three things about the AI industry: Google is already shopping for cheaper AI chip alternatives, broadcom abandoned its strategy of selling complete AI systems and is now retreating to selling bare chips at lower margins. And despite supposedly "unprecedented demand," Tan refused to raise his full-year forecast, which tells you everything about what he's actually seeing behind the curtain. Wall Street heard all three and hit the sell button so hard it dragged AMD, Intel, and the entire chip sector down with it. When a company triples its AI revenue and gets punished because tripling isn't fast enough, the expectations have left the atmosphere entirely. And here's the really scary part... These companies ARE your retirement account. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Nvidia make up roughly 30% of the S&P 500. If you have a 401k or an index fund, you are already exposed to this bet whether you chose to be or not. Every single one of these companies is telling you AI will generate trillions in revenue. But right now the math says they're spending trillions FIRST and hoping the revenue shows up later. If the revenue catches up, this becomes the greatest infrastructure buildout in human history. Bigger than railroads and bigger than the internet. If it doesn't, the companies that make up a third of the American stock market just leveraged their balance sheets into the largest write-down cycle since 2000. And unlike the dot-com crash, this time the bubble companies aren't random startups with no revenue. They're the backbone of the entire global economy.

ALBANIA VS ISRAEL DESCENDS INTO CHAOS 🚨 Israeli player was hit by flying sneakers thrown from furious Albanian fans. The entire match was drowned in nonstop booing, making it nearly impossible to play. The whole world hates them now.

A balanced view of China from Peter Alexander, an American that grew up here and has lived in China for the past 30 years 👇 Thanks @JayMartinBC!

Goldman Sachs forcing every pension fund to buy AI companies with $10 billion net losses at $1 trillion valuations

The onion never misses. 😂

Similar to joining the Green Party

For a while I was trying to figure out why Russian refinery output is down about 15% since Feb. (cope drones historically account for 1-2%) and then I realized there's literal sanctions waivers in place for seaborne Russian crude. They're shipping crude like maniacs right now.

A more interesting question than how they achieved realism is how they managed to carve this gem at all. The sealstone is only 34 mm long. The finer details are close to the limit of what is even resolvable by the human eye. Which suggests the existence of (a) magnifying lenses and (b) stonecarving tools of commensurate size in an era without sophisticated iron metallurgy. I know fairly little about primitive stoneworking tools in particular, but another interesting thing to note is that agate tends to be somewhat harder than bronze.

Daily reminder:

For immediate attention: The ceasefire between Iran and the US is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon. Its violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts. The US and Israel are responsible for the consequences of any violation.

Wow, those are some very interesting images. The highest quality I have seen to date, with some valuable information. Thank you for sharing. If you are asking what I see, well, first understand a couple things. I am not a military person, or familiar with bomb damage assessment. Nor am I a political person, or economist. I just build and operate the hardware. So I’ll tell you what this looks like from a hardware perspective, and label things that are objectively facts vs. things I am guessing at or if I put any opinions in. With those caveats, here are some facts and my analysis of the Train 6 strike. I’ve attached two pictures. The first is the undamaged facility from happier days. I’ve labelled the north end of the train with some color coded boxes, and a couple dimensions on Train 7 to give a sense of scale. Train 6 used an Air Products (now Honeywell) AP-X process, which has three refrigeration loops in series, each driven by a Frame 9 mechanical drive turbine – a propane (C3) loop, a mixed refrigerant (MR) loop, and a nitrogen expansion (N2) loop. Propane precools the feed gas and the refrigerant, the MR liquefies it, and the N2 subcools it all the way to -160 C. At the southern most portion of the photo, in blue, there is the propane refrigerant system. Process equipment is to the west of the main spine rack, and the driver is to the east. Drivers include both the turbine and the compressors on a single shaft for each loop, and they are located under the 220 m long turbine building with the tan roof. Exhaust stack is immediately to the east turbine building, with the VFD components just south of the stack. The red boxes in the middle are the primary liquefaction section, with two machines on the east in the turbine building, and the main cryogenic heat exchangers (MCHEs) on the west side of the rack. I’ve labelled the MCHE’s. The larger is the MR MCHE, which is about 50 m tall, and has a two inch thick aluminum shell. The N2 MCHE for gas subcooling is a little further to the west. It is shorter and has a stronger stainless steel shell; it is a substantially stouter piece of equipment. These two MCHEs combined are in the range of $50-100MM capital cost with a two year lead time. The yellow box at the top is the helium extraction unit. The machinery is electrically driven compander, inside the small building, and the primary separation column is just to the east of the building. With the basics out of the way, take a look at the second picture. I’ve marked where the missile impacted, and the visible area of damage; the shadows disguise some of the blast and make it a bit harder to see. But from my view, it is quite bad, having hit immediately north of the MR MCHE, doing a fine job of messing up the equipment in the liquefaction section. Compare to Train 7 next door. I’ve marked the approximate circle of visible damage, which indicates an immediate blast radius on order of 50 meters. While I’m not military, it is pretty easy to calculate the energies involved, which indicates to me that we are talking about something on order of ~100 kg HE warhead. Sizable enough to do some real damage, but not a catastrophic hit from 500 kg or more. I am a bit surprised I could not see more damage from the subsequent fires. Qatari emergency crews responded to the fires, and it appears to me they did quite well at extinguishing them quickly before significant escalation. Note the precision of the hit. If I were responsible for targeting this facility, … well, I couldn’t do it, because I love these facilities and the machines in them too much. But if a hypothetical person who knew about the facilities and wanted to harm them was planning it, this is just about where they would place a strike to cause maximum damage. Possibly a little further to the southeast to strike right on top of the MR turbine, but certainly within about 50 meters of the actual strike point. That will give a feel for the CEP of these missiles. It is quite good, which I understand is not at all a given for nations building missiles. Remember the notorious inaccuracy of the Iraqi Scuds during the 1991 Gulf War. The Iranians don’t suffer from the same problem – they can hit what they aim at with considerable precision despite American and Gulf nation efforts at interception at one of the most heavily defended areas in the Gulf. In fact, in Qatar, this site is probably the most heavily defended site, only excepting Al Udeid air base and Doha itself. What was damaged? The resolution is not adequate to fully identify everything – you’d really need a walk through to be sure. But it is clear the MR MCHE is destroyed, along with some of the smaller pieces of equipment around there. The N2 MCHE is still standing, but there is some visible damage. I’d guess that, even with the shell standing, a missile strike this close would complete destroy soft items – insulation, instruments, cabling, platforms – and likely perforate the shell with fragments such that it would be unusable as a pressure vessel. My best guess is the N2 MCHE will require replacement. To the east, the turbine housing roof appears undamaged, but I think this is deceptive. The roof is about 40 meters high, and the missile blast wave will initiate below it and propagate sideways under the pipe rack and through the building. Both the N2 and MR machines are close to the blast point and likely received a significant overpressure, along with heat from the subsequent fire. I have no doubt they are damaged. Frame 9's are robust and reliable industrial machines, but they are not designed for missiles. Whether they can be repaired or will need to be replaced is an open question. North of the impact point, I suspect the helium machine was protected from significant damage by the intervening piperack. However, the column protrudes above the piperack and probably caught an overpressure and significant fragmentation. My guess here is the helium column was likely perforated and will require major repair or replacement. To the south, the MCHE’s and piperack absorbed most of the damage and my best guess is the propane system is likely undamaged, or only suffered minor damage. Qatar has said the train will require 3 – 5 years to be back in operation. In my mind that seems a little conservative. If they can get to work immediately, and expedite procurement, I would guess about three years is a reasonable timeline. Five years I think is longer than will be required, absent another attack causing further damage. Analysis? This is speculation on my part, and anyone might well disagree. But it appears to me that Iran was sending a message more than simply just trying to destroy. They used a precise missile, but with a somewhat smaller warhead, one that is large enough to cause heavy damage, but not so large as to cause catastrophic irreparable damage to the entire train or even to multiple trains. They also targeted two trains that are jointly owned with the Qataris by ExxonMobil. (Puzzle question – why did the second missile strike Train 4 instead of the larger Qatar-XOM Train 7? Or maybe they did try to hit Train 7, but that missile was intercepted? Don’t know…). But they conspicuously avoided hitting the trains that are co-owned by Japanese or Korean partners, trying to keep them onside or neutral in the war. To me, this strike seems to say, “Look Qatar and XOM – we can hurt you. But we didn’t hurt you as much as we could, and we want you to use your influence to get the US to stop and restore the status quo ante.” Whether that will work is for the political people to say. I do know the Qataris are royally ticked off at this attack. Anyway, that is my read on it. It is definitely a very bad attack, one that caused substantial damage and will impact Qatari production for years. I am not trying to play down the impact in any way. But it is simultaneously true that it *could* have been worse. I’ll look at the Train 4 strike when I can. Looks like the miss was a bit more there – it struck southwest of the turbine house, looks like it affected the propane equipment. These reviews take a bit of time, and I am chronically short of that commodity. But thank you again for sharing these photos.

We need hear nothing more from this man. He is dead to me. He should be dead to all of us.

I mean it's pretty simple - people associated with Trump are going to get prosecuted en masse from 2029 onwards, with far more public support and legitimacy than Biden's clown show ever managed, and he probably wants to set up camp somewhere that isn't going to extradite him.