Individual Economists

15 Minutes to Being A Better Investor

The Big Picture -

 

Fun conversation with the “My First Million” guys!

 

Show Notes:

(0:00) Intro
(2:19) Christmas tree portfolio
(4:43) Cowboy account
(9:51) Day trading
(11:09) Barry yells at Lloyd Blankfein
(13:46) Panic selling
(16:45) Sam picks a fight
(18:46) Direct indexing
(21:43) Great investors
(27:25) 90% of everything is crap
(36:14) Elon’s foray into PE
(44:02) Predicting the housing crisis
(46:01) Spending a year as the dumbest guy on Wall Street
(49:01)Why bubbles are good for the economy

The post 15 Minutes to Being A Better Investor appeared first on The Big Picture.

Talking Across The Divide

Zero Hedge -

Talking Across The Divide

Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics,

How we see politics reveals a lot about who we are. But it is less akin to a Rorschach ink blot than one of those reversible images, like the drawing that is both a rabbit and a duck. As messy as society might be, it is not some blob open to any interpretation (at least not yet, anyway). The patterns are there. But where we see one clear thing clearly, our pal may see another just as sharply.

The difference is that we can ultimately resolve the artistic conflict - yes, I see both my wife and my mother-in-law in the drawing; when it comes to politics, we tend to dig in our heels and insist on our single reading.

I felt as if I was peering at a reversible image the other day while talking with a progressive friend about the major challenges confronting the U.S. Surveying the American landscape, he saw a nation in peril largely because of a handful of billionaire "oligarchs" who use their tremendous influence to shape policy while resisting efforts to pay their "fair share." Imposing wealth taxes and closing loopholes, he said, is both a moral and economic necessity to start improving the picture.

I countered that I didn't see the problem as a handful of rich guys but the many millions of Americans who lack the education, skills, and burning desire to better their own lives. The problem is not, for example, a lack of funding, but a broken education system; it is not a porous safety net, but the unwillingness of people to work.

As these discussions go, my friend was not armed with studies and statistics to support his point - he's kept busy by his demanding job and the family he loves. Honestly, this can get frustrating for those of us who are paid to know and remember such material. It's taken me too long to realize that commanding more evidence doesn't necessarily make me right. Other people's summary knowledge of all they've seen and read may lack specifics, but it doesn't make them wrong.

He made some excellent points. The rise of technology has allowed a coterie of true visionaries - including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and the late Steve Jobs - and the hedge fund guys who've piggy-backed on their talents to become unimaginably rich. They didn't invent the future, but were smart, and lucky enough to see where things were headed and did a better job than other smart and tenacious people to drive and capitalize on change. No matter their talents, many of them could only have grown so rich in America, which is home to about a third of the world's billionaires.

As almost every American agrees on the need for a tax system, he noted, the question is not whether they should pay a portion of their earnings to the government, but how much. He could not pinpoint exactly what a fair share would be. He said that the question is beside the point - fair is not a firm rate but an ever-changing number based on what people have and what the government needs. He did say that I wasn't crazy to think progressives reject any set limit as a ceiling that would limit their demand for more.

He was roughly aware that top earners pay a large share of federal taxes. I told him that the most recent IRS data indicates the top 1% paid about 38.4% of all federal individual income; include the top 10% and the figure rises above 70%. That's a lot of their money going to us.

But he noted that their effective tax rate - for the top 1% it was 26.1% in 2022 - is not onerous. And the billionaires, in particular, use a passel of legal deductions and carve-outs to reduce their tax bills.

"I know their money creates jobs and investments in the private sector," he said, "but we have a massive debt [now north of $39 trillion] and huge annual deficits that have to be paid by someone. They can best afford it." He added, "Maybe we should, like Europe, raise everyone's taxes a lot, but that is not politically viable right now. Since we need money, the rich and very rich are the best place to start."

We both agreed that people should pay for the government they want and that tax rates should not be set because of some abstract notion of fairness, but at levels that will maximize revenue.

Nevertheless, I countered that the American landscape can be viewed another way. First, I said the focus on the rich seeks to create a single bogeyman to blame for all our problems. The implication that simply taking more from Bezos and Musk is the cure for what ails us is not true - rich as they are, their fortunes are small compared to government spending. More importantly, the focus shifts the responsibility from individuals who are the captains of their own ships and leaders who have failed to govern wisely to a relatively small number of largely blameless individuals.

To take a few examples, I asserted that the superrich are not to blame for the chronic rate of absenteeism at our public schools; the record numbers of young men who are not part of the workforce; the declining rates of marriage and births. The superrich are not the reason why some of the most heavily regulated industries, including health care, education, and housing, have seen some of the highest rises in costs. Our aching moral challenge is not centered in the tax code - which falsely suggests our problems could be easily solved - but in the decisions we the people are making in our own lives.

Finally, I said, the government has plenty of money. If the federal government were a private business, its increasing revenues over the years would make it a darling of Wall Street. The problem is we spend even more. And, as recent reporting has documented, a good deal of that spending is lost to waste and fraud at every level of government.

"Let's try to fix what's broken," I told my friend, "instead of throwing more money on the dumpster fire."

"I see your point," he responded, "but we can't let problems fester waiting for a fix that might never come. And it's just wrong that these guys have so much when the need is so great."

At the end, neither of us changed our minds; we still viewed the American landscape differently. But given how bitterly divided our nation is, I found great value in just having the conversation; in respectfully listening to one another, making the effort to see where each is coming from. So much political discussion looks for fault lines in the other side's arguments rather than their strengths. We look to confirm our views rather than expand them. If we want to persuade others, the first thing we must do is listen to them. This seems obvious, so why don't we start doing it?

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/14/2026 - 09:20

Former UK Prime Minister Admits Mass Migration Is Being Weaponized To Undermine Western Civilization

Zero Hedge -

Former UK Prime Minister Admits Mass Migration Is Being Weaponized To Undermine Western Civilization

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity,

In the space of hours, Britain endured yet more random barbaric violence. A 17-year-old girl was stabbed in the neck on a quiet residential street in Burnley, Lancashire, and a 21-year-old man was murdered in Central Park, Chelmsford, Essex. These incidents form part of a relentless pattern of attacks that former Prime Minister Liz Truss directly links to mass migration policies and the deliberate undermining of British society.

Truss described institutions corrupted by leftist ideology that suppress facts about the root cause - mass migration - while left-wing politicians weaponise immigration to erode the nation state itself. The public is livid. The official response under Keir Starmer has been to target those exposing the problem rather than the problem itself.

On Friday afternoon, a 17-year-old girl was walking alone on a street in Burnley, a small town in northern England, when a man approached from behind and stabbed her in the back of the neck. Armed police responded swiftly. The victim was treated in hospital; her injuries were miraculously not life-threatening. A 30-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

Lancashire Police confirmed the attack and deployed extra patrols for community reassurance. Whle mainstream reports omitted key background details, GB News reporter Charlie Peters later stated that Lancashire Police confirmed the suspect is a British-born man of Pakistani heritage.

Video footage circulating online shows the unprovoked attack and the subsequent arrest. Public reaction has been one of fury and exhaustion at yet another random stabbing of a young girl in broad daylight.

Hours later, emergency services were called to Central Park in Chelmsford, Essex after reports of a serious assault. A 21-year-old man was found with critical injuries and pronounced dead at the scene. He had been stabbed.

Essex Police arrested three teenagers - a 14-year-old boy, a 17-year-old boy and an 18-year-old man - all from the Chelmsford area, on suspicion of murder. They remain in custody. Detective Inspector Lydia George described it as a deeply distressing incident and confirmed no further suspects were being sought.

These cases arrive amid a documented surge in such violence that has become impossible to ignore.

In widely shared commentary, Truss argued that recent violent attacks reveal an establishment corrupted by DEI priorities that place ideology above equal treatment under the law. She stated that the response to public concern is suppression of information and attacks on those highlighting the root causes.

Truss described how left-wing politicians actively encourage immigration to undermine the basis of society and Western civilisation. She said they seek to erode the family and the nation state. When British people say they have had enough, the reaction from Starmer's government is to arrest and jail those who express concern.

"They want to undermine the family. They want to undermine the nation state. And people in Britain are saying 'we've had enough of this,'" Truss urged.

"People are absolutely livid about what's happening in our country," she continued, adding "Our institutions have become corrupted... by the DEI mentality, rather than focusing on everybody being treated equally under the law. Their response is to try and suppress what's happening... and attack those who are saying 'why are these things happening?'"

The Lancashire and Essex incidents follow closely on the heels of the horrific attack in Belfast earlier this week. There, an African migrant from Sudan named Hadi Alodid was involved in a street assault on a vulnerable local man, Stephen Ogilvie, in which the attacker attempted to saw off the victim's head in public.

Ogilvie, described as special needs and hard of hearing, had reportedly helped the migrants move into nearby accommodation just days earlier.

A local witness stated that two migrants were involved, not one, and that a second Sudanese man remained at large. The attack triggered widespread unrest in loyalist areas, with properties linked to recent arrivals targeted. Police rescued foreign nationals from burning buildings. The victim suffered life-changing injuries and remained in hospital.

And all of this comes in the wake of revelations surrounding the murder of Henry Nowak.

Official reports and much of the legacy media continue to downplay or omit perpetrator backgrounds in these cases, even as independent journalists and ordinary citizens document the pattern. The result is a two-tier information environment where facts about migration-linked violence are treated as dangerous while the violence itself continues.

When citizens notice the demographic reality of many perpetrators and the policy decisions that enabled their presence, the response is not honest examination but censorship and criminalisation of speech. Starmer's government has shown particular zeal in pursuing those protesting the consequences of mass migration, while insisting that the public avert its gaze.

This is not an accident of policy. It is the predictable outcome of decades of globalist open-border ideology that prioritised abstract diversity over the concrete safety and cohesion of existing communities. The British people did not vote for this transformation. They were never asked.

Britain's experience serves as a warning. Uncontrolled mass immigration, sold as compassion or economic necessity, has delivered neither safety nor prosperity for the native population in many areas. It has delivered parallel societies, imported crime patterns, and a political class more interested in silencing critics than protecting citizens.

The question for Britain is no longer whether the current trajectory is sustainable. It is how much more violence and cultural erosion the public will tolerate before demanding leaders who actually represent the interests of the country they govern. The facts are no longer suppressible. The people are no longer silent.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/14/2026 - 08:10

Sweden Sees Russia-NATO Conflict In 'Relatively Near Future'

Zero Hedge -

Sweden Sees Russia-NATO Conflict In 'Relatively Near Future'

Russia could test the NATO alliance's unity and its "all-for-one" collective defense commitments in the "relatively near future," Sweden’s Defense Commission has said, sounding the alarm in a fresh report issued Friday.

In the blunt interim report cited by Radio Sweden, the commission made it clear that Moscow's 'aggression' against the West is no longer a distant threat, but that "An armed attack against Sweden or our allies cannot be ruled out."

Getty Images

So far throughout the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fifth year, it has been Baltic countries and the UK being the most out front in terms of claiming that Russia's aims are expansionist - a charge Moscow has vehemently and consistently denied.

But now it seems Sweden is hyping the supposed 'Russia will invade Europe' narrative, long a favored assumption among the more hawkish of European officials.

President Putin himself has denied repeatedly that his ordered 'special military operation' will go beyond Ukraine. While Europe sees Russia aims as based on aggression and going on the offensive, the Kremlin ironically enough sees its actions as fundamentally defensive. 

For example, Putin in a fresh address to Russian service members on Friday stated definitely, "It was they who carried out the coup d'etat in Ukraine, which forced us to take the people of Crimea under protection. When they started the war, they started bombing Donetsk using warplanes."

But the Swedish Defense Commission - a coalition of lawmakers and defense experts - has still warned that Europe's security landscape could deteriorate at breakneck speed.

Their prescription is a rapid, hands on and publicly acknowledged overhaul of both military and civil defense rearmament, in effect jumping on the bandwagon, considering the trend among bigger European powers like Germany.

Meanwhile, next door in Finland, Helsinki is keeping a laser focus on the Kremlin's movements. Both aforementioned Nordic countries actually share Arctic, far northern borders with Russia.

Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen told public broadcaster Yle that Russia is actively beefing up its military infrastructure and bolstering boots on the ground near the Finnish border.

"Russia is creating new military units, multiplying troop numbers, as well as building capability so that it can quickly mobilize troops from other parts of Russia," Hakkanen said.

Reports do indicate Russia is actively constructing a new military garrison in Petrozavodsk, right in Finland's backyard.

But Russia in its own right does have serious reason to be concerned given the Western military alliance since the start of the Ukraine war has added these very countries as the newest NATO members. Swedenh joined as the 32nd member on March 7, 2024 and Finland was welcomed by Brussels as the 31st member on April 4, 2023.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/14/2026 - 07:35

Indigenous Nonsense

Zero Hedge -

Indigenous Nonsense

Authored by Spyridon Andrews via American Greatness,

When the dust settles hundreds of years from now and people begin to assess the hows and whys of Western decline, the issue of colonialism will figure prominently.

We are traveling from Mexico City to San Miguel de Allende with “The Professor,” a San Miguel resident who makes extra money by driving tourists from Mexico City to San Miguel. The title of professor is honorary. He is a self-taught scholar, a writer, and a highly intelligent man who works odd jobs around San Miguel to earn a living. The Professor is sharing tales of the Aztec Empire with us as we drive northward, stopped only briefly by the friendly Mexican police who take their usual bribe of around $200 as insurance against being arrested for more serious crimes, real or fictitious.

The Professor goes on to tell us that all the horrible atrocities allegedly committed by the Aztecs were lies, all lies. Native American culture is burned into the mental DNA of Central Mexico. Children assemble on holidays dressed like little Aztec warriors for parades. There is pride in their Aztec heritage.

On the way back, we stop to see the pyramids outside Mexico City, and The Professor is full of information about this fascinating culture. He describes their innovation, tremendous power, and unrivaled legacy. The Professor is a proud man.

But despite my enormous respect for The Professor, the stories about the Aztecs are not lies. The Aztecs believed that the gods had sacrificed themselves to create the world and that, out of necessity, human blood was required to keep the sun moving across the sky. Human and animal sacrifice have been elemental features of nature religions throughout history. The harvest required blood.

The Aztecs sacrificed prisoners of war in religious ceremonies. The prisoners were led to the tops of temple pyramids, held down by priests, and had their hearts cut out while still alive. Their bodies were then strewn down the steps of the pyramid; the bloodier the spectacle, the better. Archaeological studies at sites such as Templo Mayor have uncovered racks of human skulls known as tzompantli. Human sacrifice was one of the things that made the empire go, alongside continual military conquest and tribute extraction. Subject peoples were required to provide food, textiles, luxury goods, labor, and, when the priests ran out of bodies, sacrificial victims. The Aztecs were so hated that many indigenous groups allied themselves with the Spaniards.

The Mayans also get a bit of a pass. They are remembered for their astronomy, mathematics, writing system, and cities, but not nearly as much for their human sacrifice, torture, and public humiliation of victims. Ritual killings were common, and murder was infused with religious meaning and legitimacy.

There is an awful lot of emphasis on the atrocities of the Spanish conquerors, and there should be. The conquistadores were not such nice guys either. But for all the talk about colonialism, few dare to examine it thoughtfully. Contrary to what they may believe over at Barnard or Smith College, fighting colonialism does not consist of wearing a mask into Philz Coffee. History shows that colonialism is not good or bad in the abstract, any more than all indigenous populations were terrific people who deserved to remain in power forever.

The coffee-shop view of colonialism assumes that moral legitimacy flows automatically from historical priority. We are told that people who arrived first possess a uniquely valid claim to the land and that later arrivals are forever burdened by a kind of original sin. Arguments about ownership in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Americas frequently revolve around the endlessly repeated question of who was there first. To which I say, is this the real question?

Human history is not a story of static populations peacefully occupying fixed territories. Human history is a bloody mess. It is a story of migration, conquest, assimilation, intermarriage, commerce, shifting alliances, and conflict. Before one group was there, another was there. And before them, another. The idea of an original owner is neither logical nor provable.

The notion that being “here first” creates a permanent political entitlement does not survive even minimal scrutiny. If first possession establishes political sovereignty, then every modern nation on earth is illegitimate. Every border, kingdom, republic, and civilization would need to defend itself against claims arising from earlier migrations and forgotten peoples.

Equally false are theological and mystical claims to land. In Israel today, three different religions claim rights to the same patch of desert based upon the authority of their holy books. Throughout history, religions have invoked divine authority to invade neighboring lands, expel inhabitants, and wage war. Whether the justification comes from Manifest Destiny, the Torah, the Talmud, the Koran, or some other sacred source, the underlying claim is essentially the same. And it is nonsense.

The more important question is not who was here first. The more important question is who governs well. I submit that political legitimacy is derived from creating conditions in which human beings can flourish. Legitimacy is established through justice, the protection of liberty, the maintenance of order and safety, the safeguarding of property, the encouragement of opportunity, and the principle that rulers themselves are subject to law.

Today’s discussions of colonialism often condemn it as a single phenomenon. Yet colonial ventures—and indigenous governments—varied enormously. Some colonial regimes were exploitative and destructive. Others introduced institutions that became the foundation of later prosperity. Most contained elements of both.

Some colonial regimes, like Great Britain in many instances, created railroads, ports, courts, universities, modern medicine, commercial systems, property rights, and civil administration. Historical analysis requires attention to actual results rather than slogans.

Under British administration, Hong Kong evolved from a relatively modest trading settlement into one of the world’s most prosperous financial centers. The British were not perfect, since they were, after all, British. But they created opportunities for millions of people over the century, or so they were in power. Then the indigenous Chinese government came into power, bringing its usual basket of fun.

Beijing imposed the National Security Law in 2020. Hong Kong went from one of the freest and most prosperous cities in Asia to a place where political dissent can land you in prison. Independent newspapers were shut down, activists jailed, elections restructured, and civic organizations dissolved. But don’t worry, because it was indigenous.

Singapore followed a different path. The British established a major international port, a functioning legal system, English-language administration, and commercial institutions. Singapore’s leaders built upon those foundations rather than dismantling them. The result was one of the most remarkable economic transformations in modern history. Today, Singapore is one of the safest, wealthiest, and most efficiently governed societies in the world. They built upon foundations laid by the evil colonizers.

Then there is India. British rule was far from one big tea party. Nevertheless, modern India inherited a nationwide civil service, a common-law legal system, rail networks, universities, administrative structures, and commercial institutions that continue to play important roles today. The British made considerable damage, the most lasting of which may be the Indian fascination with cricket, a hideous and boring game, along with the equally annoying habit of taking tea in the middle of a match.

So not all colonial empires are created equal. And now, we should also point out, not all indigenous cultures are created equal. There are many examples, including recent ones, of governments that enjoyed broad cultural support before delivering poverty, repression, corruption, economic stagnation, and the suppression of civil liberties. Cuba, Venezuela, and many African nations come readily to mind.

This confidence in indigenous culture is often paired with the equally dubious assumption that all cultures are equal in their outcomes. Sorry, despite what your anthropology professor told you, all cultures are not equal. Some encourage innovation, literacy, accountability, and economic development. Some protect women, minorities, and dissenters. Some cultivate the peaceful transfer of power. Others normalize violence, patronage, corruption, and disregard for human rights.

Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe was indigenous. He imposed political repression, economic mismanagement, hyperinflation, and destroyed the agricultural sector. He was handed the ball on the five-yard line and fumbled it. Idi Amin was indigenous. His regime became notorious for brutality and persecution. South Africa today has an indigenous government. So does Mexico. The fact that leaders share ancestry with the people they govern tells us nothing about whether they govern wisely.

And what about us? How much comfort should we take from the fact that our own political class is homegrown? Does it make endless debt, endless wars, corruption, and institutional decline more acceptable because the people responsible were born here?

History is not sentimental. It does not care who arrived first, whose ancestors crossed a particular river, or whose holy book claims title to a patch of ground. History does not award virtue based upon genealogy, ethnicity, race, religion, or indigeneity. It asks a far more practical question: What did you do with the place once you got it?

Did you create liberty or oppression? Prosperity or poverty? Justice or corruption? Did ordinary people have the opportunity to build families, businesses, communities, and meaningful lives? Were rulers constrained by law, or did they become laws unto themselves? Did your institutions survive your leaders, or did everything collapse into tribalism, violence, and decay?

That is how civilizations are judged. Rome is not remembered because Romans got there first. Britain is not remembered because Britons got there first. America will not be remembered because Americans got here first. They will be remembered for what they built, what they preserved, what they destroyed, and whether they expanded or diminished the possibilities of human flourishing.

In the end, legitimacy is not inherited. It is earned. It does not arise from ancestry, mythology, chronology, or blood. It arises from competence, justice, liberty, opportunity, and the rule of law. The question is not who was here first. The question has always been, and will always be, who governs well.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/14/2026 - 07:00

10 Sunday Reads

The Big Picture -

Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

• The Cattle Empire That Turned Out to Be a Giant Ponzi Scheme: WSJ on the agricultural Ponzi nobody saw because the inventory was supposed to be on the hoof. The oldest frauds keep finding new collateral. Investors and bank loans fueled Brian McClain’s ‘house of cards’ beef operations, which burned through $170 million (Wall Street Journal)

• Fakes of the Future: Literary credibility in the age of AI. We have, I believe, crossed a new threshold, and all authored writing—novels, poems, screenplays, newspaper columns, not to mention love letters—will be judged according to which side of that divide it falls on. On one side are texts produced before the arrival of generative large language models (LLMs). On the other, everything that has followed—texts that might still be useful, even compelling, but that will always face a lingering suspicion of not being entirely human, of having been smoothed by systems trained to predict the word that comes next. We will come to prefer the former over the latter, not because it will be better, but because we will be more certain of its origins. LARB on what generative AI does to the marketplace of cultural authenticity. The piece takes the long view rather than the breaking-news view. (Los Angeles Review of Books)

• Polymarket sponsoring election conspiracies from far-right influencers: The “truth machine” is paying for election lies: Polymarket has sponsored posts from far-right influencers on X pushing election conspiracies and disinformation. Popular Information has uncovered a network of at least 16 influencers1, with a collective audience of 13 million, publishing election-related misinformation in posts sponsored by Polymarket. Judd Legum traces Polymarket’s ad spend through far-right influencer accounts amplifying election-fraud narratives. The prediction market with a thumb on the scale. (Popular Information) see also Kalshi asks paid influencers to delete posts sowing doubts over LA mayoral election: Kalshi on Friday asked some of its paid political influencers to remove X posts that sowed doubt about the integrity of the Los Angeles mayoral election while promoting Kalshi odds. Semafor scoops the prediction-market platform paying influencers to undermine election confidence, then scrambling to walk it back. The product’s incentives are the story. (Semafor)

• The SpaceX IPO and the End of Public Ownership: The hypocrisy that will emerge from this IPO should be bottled up and placed in the Louvre. On how SpaceX’s IPO structure mostly forecloses meaningful public ownership — supervoting shares, distribution mechanics, the works. The trend the market keeps not pricing. (Me and the Money Printer)

• Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files: The president’s top advisers gathered in a series of Situation Room meetings as they struggled to contain a scandal engulfing Donald Trump himself. NYT Magazine on the West Wing scramble around the Epstein documents release. The story is the freakout more than the contents. (New York Times Magazine)

• A Billionaire Explains Why American Business Now Feels like the Mafia: Matt Stoller relays a billionaire’s plain description of how American business now operates under the rules of organized crime rather than commerce. Bracing. In his autobiography “Born to Be Wired,” Warner board member and billionaire John Malone describes how he helped turn America into a society focused on greed and market power. (BIG by Matt Stoller)

• How America Gave Up on Its Own History: Unable to agree on how to interpret the American story, the country’s schools, universities, and political institutions have stopped trying to tell it at all. A long Atlantic feature on the collapse of any shared American historical narrative. The arguments will annoy you in different ways depending on your priors — that’s the point. (The Atlantic)

• The Untold Saga Behind an Infamous Male Supermodel Cult: Hollywood Reporter on the long-rumored male-model cult that turned out to be even weirder than the rumors. Some weeks, you just want a strange long-read. Once the world’s highest-paid male model, Hoyt Richards gave his last penny to a socialite conman who claimed to be an alien and preyed on the sexy and susceptible. A new HBO doc tells only half the story. (Hollywood Reporter)

• 5 ways daily cannabis use can affect your body and mind: WaPo on what the longitudinal data now shows about daily cannabis use — cardiovascular, cognitive, motivational. The conversation the legalization debate keeps refusing to host. (Washington Post)

• The ongoing corruption of the World Cup by Gianni Infantino: You can’t turn a blind eye to what is going on in America in particular. People often say you shouldn’t mix politics and sport, but that’s bullshit. Typically it comes from people whose own political views just can’t be reconciled with the beauty of sport and often football in particular. Anyway, how can anyone justify that stance when FIFA, the body that organises the World Cup, consistently and explicitly links the two? Arseblog’s running tally of the Infantino regime’s particular flavor of self-dealing. Funny because it’s earned. (Arse Blog) see also Everything wrong with the 2026 World Cup: From unprecedented wars and rip-off ticket prices to Gianni Infantino selling football’s soul and Donald Trump’s determination to create a “Maga World Cup”, Miguel Delaney details how the 2026 tournament has been riddled with controversy. The Independent’s pre-tournament catalog of geopolitical, logistical, and ethical problems with the Trump/FIFA World Cup. The Ringer’s optimism, on the rocks. (Independent)

Video of the day: Why the World Cup Is So Expensive

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jean Eric Salata, Chair of EQT Group and Chair of EQT Asia. EQT is a purpose-driven global investment organization with over $310 billion in total assets under management, making it the largest private markets firm headquartered outside the United States.

Solar supplied 12.8% of US energy generation in May — the highest share ever, and the first time that solar surpassed coal in the US

Source: Sherwood

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The post 10 Sunday Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Somaliland Opens Diplomatic Office In Taiwan Despite Strong Objections From Beijing

Zero Hedge -

Somaliland Opens Diplomatic Office In Taiwan Despite Strong Objections From Beijing

Via The Cradle

The breakaway African territory of Somaliland opened a new representative office in Taiwan on Friday, saying it had the right to establish diplomatic relations despite objections from Somalia.

"We have the right to choose who we have relationships with. It's our prerogative, and so it hasn't been successful as far as pressure tactics," stated Mahmoud Adam Jama ​Galaal, Somaliland's representative to Taiwan, at a press conference to mark the office opening.

Rti photo

Taiwan's Deputy Foreign Minister Francois Wu also spoke, saying, "Taiwan and Somaliland are both beacons of democracy, freedom, and rule of law."

Located on the strategic Horn of Africa, Somaliland has functioned as a de facto state since declaring independence from Somalia in 1991, with its own governing institutions and security structures – despite receiving no recognition from any UN member state until Israel recognized it in December. 

Galaal added that Taiwan, which also lacks international recognition, is a "very important ally." Somaliland and Taiwan first established representative offices in each ⁠other's capitals in 2020.

Taiwan separated from China after the Chinese Civil War in 1949, when the defeated Nationalist government retreated to the island and established the Republic of China (ROC). The Chinese Communist Party established the People's Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland and has claimed Taiwan as its territory since that time.

Galaal said Somaliland and Taiwan would not succumb to pressure from Beijing and Mogadishu to sever ties.

Somalia condemned Taiwan's attempts to establish "unauthorized" diplomatic relations with Somaliland.

“"Somaliland remains an inalienable part of Somalia, and we strongly condemn external attempts to bypass the legitimate federal government in Mogadishu," Ali Mohamed Omar, Somalia's minister of state for foreign affairs, stated on Friday.

After Israel became the first state to recognize Somaliland's claim to independence, Mogadishu condemned it as a “deliberate attack” on Somalia's sovereignty. 

Israel is seeking closer ties with Somaliland as part of its effort to establish military bases allowing it to project power in the Red Sea, including in the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait, where Yemen's armed forces are dominant.

In a blow to Somaliland, Washington recently declared support for the sovereignty of Somalia.

A State Department report titled “Potential Areas for Improved US Engagement with Somaliland” was submitted to Congress on 1 June and published by the media on 2 June. 

In that report, the State Department said that Somaliland was a part of the Federal Republic of Somalia and the US maintains a positive relationship with Somaliland “within that framework.”

A US congressional source told Middle East Eye (MEE) at the time that the US was not planning to recognize Somaliland. 

“Though lobbyists, including former Trump officials Tibor Nagy and Peter Pham, had raised the hopes of Somalilanders over US recognition, there was never a sign that the president would go through with it,” the congressional source said.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 23:20

Which States Are Leading America's Economy?

Zero Hedge -

Which States Are Leading America's Economy?

America’s biggest economies aren’t always its strongest.

While California, Texas, and New York dominate in economic size, long-term competitiveness depends on a broader mix of factors, from business creation and labor market strength to innovation and investment.

This 2026 analysis by WalletHub evaluates all 50 states and Washington, D.C. across 28 indicators of economic activity, economic health, and innovation potential.

This ranking, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, highlights the states that are building the foundations for future growth.

Where Every State Ranks in 2026

The ranking below evaluates the economic strength of all 50 states and Washington, D.C. in 2026:

Rank State Total State Economy Score 2026 1 Massachusetts 69.4 2 Washington 67.3 3 Utah 65.9 4 California 65.0 5 Delaware 63.0 6 North Carolina 60.3 7 New York 57.6 8 Texas 57.0 9 Colorado 56.4 10 Florida 54.3 11 Idaho 53.4 12 Georgia 53.1 13 New Hampshire 52.9 14 Virginia 51.2 15 Arizona 51.1 16 Connecticut 51.0 17 Tennessee 50.8 18 South Carolina 49.3 19 Montana 48.9 20 Maryland 48.7 21 Minnesota 48.1 22 Indiana 47.4 23 Kansas 47.3 24 Oregon 47.1 25 New Jersey 46.2 26 New Mexico 45.7 27 Michigan 44.6 28 Alabama 44.4 29 Vermont 44.4 30 Pennsylvania 44.2 31 Wisconsin 43.5 32 Alaska 42.9 33 District of Columbia 42.1 34 Nebraska 41.7 35 Nevada 41.1 36 Arkansas 40.3 37 Illinois 40.1 38 Ohio 39.8 39 Iowa 39.3 40 North Dakota 38.8 41 South Dakota 38.7 42 Missouri 38.4 43 Oklahoma 38.3 44 Hawaii 38.3 45 Mississippi 36.2 46 Wyoming 35.9 47 Rhode Island 35.4 48 Maine 33.8 49 Louisiana 33.2 50 Kentucky 32.4 51 West Virginia 25.4 Why Massachusetts Leads the Ranking

Massachusetts outperformed larger states including California, Texas, and New York thanks to its combination of innovation output, STEM talent, and business formation.

It is also home to many of the nation’s fastest-growing tech companies, with business creation propelled by its innovation-driven economy and world-class universities.

Despite being the nation’s 15th-most populous state, Massachusetts is well-positioned to drive innovation and economic growth as technology rapidly accelerates.

Innovation Is the Biggest Separator

The 10 highest-ranking states differ significantly in geography, politics, and industry mix. However, they share a common strength: generating new ideas and new businesses at a considerable rate.

Like Massachusetts, Washington is powered by technology and research. Notably, software developers rank as Washington’s most common occupation. California remains the epicenter for AI giants and venture capital activity. Utah is now one of the country’s fastest-growing tech hubs, with cost-of-living-adjusted median household income reaching $91,600, the highest in the nation.

In contrast, many of the lowest-ranked states produce fewer high-growth companies due to lower investment levels, fewer patents, and less-developed innovation ecosystems.

The New Geography of Growth

One of the clearest patterns in the ranking is the continued rise of the Sun Belt. North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Georgia all rank among America’s economic leaders, reflecting years of population growth, business investment, and job creation.

North Carolina ranks sixth overall, ahead of New York and Colorado. In 2025, it gained a net 84,100 residents, the highest in the country. Texas places eighth, while Florida and Georgia also rank among the top 15. Tennessee and South Carolina also finish comfortably in the upper half of the ranking, while both states recorded some of the strongest domestic migration gains last year.

The result is a broader shift in America’s economic map. While coastal innovation hubs remain dominant, many Southern states are becoming important centers of growth in their own right.

The States Building Tomorrow’s Economy

The rankings suggest that future economic leadership will depend less on size alone and more on a state’s ability to attract talent, support entrepreneurship, and turn innovation into growth.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the fastest-growing states by 2050.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 22:45

China's New AI Agent Risks Trapping Western Tech In Rights Abuses: Analysts

Zero Hedge -

China's New AI Agent Risks Trapping Western Tech In Rights Abuses: Analysts

Authored by Jarvis Lim via The Epoch Times,

China's new state-backed artificial intelligence (AI) platform threatens to stifle domestic tech innovation through forced ideological compliance, and in the West, it could also be used to cover up the regime's human rights abuses, analysts warn.

A screen advertising Xinhua News Agency in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, on March 2, 2020. Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Xinhua, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), will spend more than 1.1 billion yuan ($162.38 million) to launch an AI agent to propagate Chinese leader Xi Jinping's thinking, according to a feasibility study published on its website on June 5.

Dubbed "Xinhua Yudian," the platform positions itself as an indispensable tool for journalists, a practical asset for party cadres, and a trusted information source for the general public, the study showed.

"Through 'Q&A on Xi's Words' and 'Xi Study Guide,' it presents the core essence and practical requirements of the general secretary's important discourses," the report said.

In 2023, China passed the "Interim Measures for the Management of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services," prohibiting content that could incite subversion, threaten national security, or damage the country's image.

The measures require market participants to "uphold the core socialist values," according to a translation.

Cementing Control

Feng Chongyi, an associate professor in China studies at the University of Technology Sydney, said Xinhua's latest move signals that Beijing views every new AI technology developed domestically as a tool to consolidate its grip on power.

"This shows the CCP is attempting to reinforce the personality cult around Xi Jinping," Feng told The Epoch Times.

"Xi has already rolled out similar initiatives, requiring middle schoolers and party cadres to study and even take exams on his political ideology."

Charles Cheng-chung Lo, a professor with the Graduate Institute of Science and Technology Law at the National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology in Taiwan, said the regime aims to aggressively marshal national resources in AI and technology to protect its "political security."

"Political security means safeguarding the CCP's leadership and ruling status, as well as its socialist system with Chinese characteristics," Lo told The Epoch Times.

"Under such a system, all technological development naturally faces strict state regulation based on this political premise."

'Extreme Self-Censorship'

Lee Chung-chih, deputy convenor of the Strategic Industries Program at Taiwanese think tank the DIMEs Center, said China's generative AI models, such as DeepSeek, are engineered to strictly conform to Party dogma, leaving them unable to provide objective answers on political, historical, and social issues.

The rise of agentic AI - autonomous software systems capable of taking action and performing complex tasks on behalf of users - is set to entrench that dynamic further, he said, pointing to Xinhua Yudian as the latest example.

"This is completely detrimental to the verification and creation of knowledge," Lee told The Epoch Times.

"China is currently locking its society into an 'isolated universe.'"

Lee said the platform's proposed functions, such as content inspection, traceability, correction, and guided documentation, could prompt Beijing to demand that private AI firms align with Xinhua's standards.

"If private AI developers refuse to comply, the sector could wither and talent may flee," he said.

Lee warned that pushing these rigid censorship standards to the extreme would lock China's entire information ecosystem into a cycle of ideological compliance, stifling genuine innovation.

"Chinese journalists and scholars will start using AI to engage in hyper-conformity, aiming to outdo the state's own narratives and push even further left," Lee said.

"This extreme self-censorship just to please the authorities will leave them completely blind to genuine technological breakthroughs or geopolitical crises from the outside world."

Global Infiltration

Lo said foreign AI products and services seeking to integrate with this state-run platform will likely face surveillance under Xi's concept of "comprehensive national security" - an overarching doctrine where ideology now dictates all aspects of Chinese governance.

"In other words, the price of tapping into China's vast market is strict localized regulation," Lo said.

He said that securing this access could mean filtering out factual answers on sensitive topics, such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement, to meet Beijing's political red lines.

"The likelihood of self-censorship will increase as ideological screening becomes the inevitable compliance cost for entry," Lo said.

But the risks could extend further, as any Western tech firms that choose to partner with platforms like Xinhua Yudian may inadvertently become tools of CCP repression, according to Feng.

"Many companies operate under the belief that technology knows no borders, selling their products to the CCP," Feng said.

"What they fail to realize is that Beijing could harness their advanced technology on Xinhua Yudian and others to further violate the privacy and human rights of ordinary people."

Feng said that adopting these authoritarian standards could ultimately backfire, endangering the developers' own home nations.

"If democratic societies fail to counter Beijing's cognitive warfare, Western AI systems forced into compliance will essentially hand the regime a digital backdoor," he said.

"It allows China to push this warfare seamlessly across frontiers, severely subverting the international order."

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 22:10

North Korea Rips Fresh Western Criticism Of Expanding Moscow Relationship

Zero Hedge -

North Korea Rips Fresh Western Criticism Of Expanding Moscow Relationship

North Korea fired back on Saturday and lashed out at the Washington-Seoul alliance, tearing into a fresh South Korea-EU joint statement that condemned Pyongyang's deepening military alliance with Russia.

North Korea has increasingly over the past acknowledge a significant number of troops sacrificed in support of Russia and in the context of the brutal and grinding Ukraine war.

The Western-aligned statement, inked Wednesday during South Korean President Lee Jae Myung's high-profile trip to Brussels, took direct aim at the "illegal military cooperation" fueling the war in Ukraine.

"We condemn support by third parties, in particular the DPRK, which enables Russia to sustain its war of aggression against Ukraine," the statement said.

A fully anticipated, North Korea's foreign ministry quickly hit back through the state-run Korean Central News Agency, framing its axis with Moscow as a mere "exercise of sovereign rights."

Russia and North Korea under Presidents Putin and Kim have even signed a defense, technology and economic cooperation pact relatively recently.

The ministry didn't mince words, calling the joint condemnation a "clear infringement on the sovereignty of our state and a grave hostile act," while pointedly reminding everyone that South Korea remains the North's primary "enemy state."

Pyongyang has of late branded Seoul as Washington's "favorite dagger" in alleged grand American plot aimed at "invading... the Asian continent.”

The reference was a play on words after General Xavier Brunson, the top American military commander in South Korea, raised eyebrows last month by provocatively describing his host nation as "the dagger in the heart of Asia."

Both North Korea and China have seized on Brunson's slip of the tongue, painting it as proof of Washington's true playbook ofusing Seoul to contain Beijing.

With North Korean leader Kim Jong Un already putting his money where his mouth is - shipping troops and heavy munitions to bolster Vladimir Putin’s front lines - the war in Ukraine has slowly been morphing into more than just a EUropean crisis.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 21:35

Why The Millionaire Next Door Drives A Used Car - And What That Teaches About Real Wealth

Zero Hedge -

Why The Millionaire Next Door Drives A Used Car - And What That Teaches About Real Wealth

Authored by Peter Daisyme via Due,

The wealthiest person I know personally drives a 2018 Toyota Camry. He owns three rental properties, has over $2 million in investment accounts, and could buy any car on any lot without blinking. He chooses not to, and his explanation is both simple and profound: "A car is a tool that takes you from one place to another. Everything beyond that is a payment for other people's perception of you."

Income alone doesn't create wealth. The key is the gap between what you earn and what you spend. Morakod1977/Shutterstock

That conversation rearranged how I think about money, status, and the difference between looking wealthy and actually being wealthy. And the more I studied the habits of genuinely rich people - not the Instagram version of rich, but the people with real, substantial, enduring wealth - the more I found that his approach was the rule, not the exception.

The Wealth Illusion

We live in a culture that equates visible consumption with financial success. A nice car, a big house, designer clothes, expensive vacations - these are the signals we use to judge who has money and who does not. The problem is that those signals are almost perfectly inverted from reality.

The person leasing a $70,000 SUV might have a negative net worth. The person buying rounds at the bar might be maxing out a credit card. The couple who just renovated their kitchen might have raided their retirement accounts to pay for it.

Meanwhile, the person with $1.5 million in the bank is wearing jeans from Target, driving a paid-off Honda, and eating dinner at home. They do not look wealthy because they channeled the money that would create the appearance of wealth into building actual wealth.

This is not a new observation - the book "The Millionaire Next Door" documented it decades ago - but it bears repeating because the cultural pressure to spend for status has only intensified with social media. Every platform is designed to show you people living aspirational lifestyles, and the psychological pull to keep up is relentless.

The Math Of Lifestyle Inflation

The mechanism that keeps high earners from building wealth is lifestyle inflation - the tendency to increase spending proportionally (or faster) as income grows. A $10,000 raise should accelerate wealth building. Instead, it usually gets absorbed by a nicer apartment, a better car, more dining out, and upgraded vacations.

Consider two people who both earn $100,000 per year. Person A spends $90,000 and saves $10,000. Person B spends $70,000 and saves $30,000. After 20 years of investing at a 7 percent annual return, Person A has about $410,000. Person B has about $1,230,000. They earned exactly the same amount. The difference is entirely in spending decisions.

The gap gets wider as incomes grow. If Person B receives raises over the years and keeps spending at $70,000 while saving the difference, their accumulation accelerates dramatically. Person A, who upgrades their lifestyle with every raise, stays on the same slow trajectory regardless of how much more they earn.

This is why income is a poor predictor of wealth. The correlation between earning and accumulating is much weaker than people assume. The real predictor is the gap between earning and spending - and that gap is a choice.

What Actually Wealthy People Spend On

After studying the spending patterns of people I know who have built significant wealth, a clear pattern emerges. They spend freely on what matters to them and ruthlessly cut everything that does not.

One friend spends generously on travel - international trips, business-class seats on long flights, quality hotels. But she drives a ten-year-old car and lives in a modest house. Travel brings her joy and enriches her life. The car is transportation. The house is a shelter. She allocates accordingly.

Another friend spends very little on himself personally but funds his children's education and activities without hesitation. His wardrobe is basic. His entertainment spending is minimal. His kids' college accounts are fully funded.

The common thread is intentionality. Wealthy people do not spend less overall because they are cheap - they spend less on things they do not care about, so they can spend more on things they do care about and invest the difference. They have examined their own values and aligned their spending with those values rather than with social expectations.

The Status Tax

I think of unnecessary status spending as a tax - the status tax. It is the premium you pay for goods and services, not because they perform better, but because they signal wealth or taste to others.

A $300 watch tells time just as well as a $5,000 watch. A $30,000 car gets you to work just as reliably as a $60,000 car. A $2 coffee tastes nearly identical to a $6 coffee with a designer label on the cup. The difference in price is the status tax, and over a lifetime, it is enormous.

If you spent $500 a month less on status consumption - the car upgrade, the brand-name clothes, the visible luxury purchases - and invested that $500 at 7 percent, you would have roughly $260,000 after 20 years. That is the real cost of caring what strangers think about your car.

I am not arguing that you should never buy nice things. I am arguing that you should buy them because they genuinely improve your life, not because they improve how other people perceive you. The distinction is everything.

Building Wealth The Boring Way

The actual wealth-building formula is anticlimactic. Earn a reasonable income. Spend significantly less than you earn. Invest the difference in diversified, low-cost index funds. Do this consistently for 20 to 30 years. That is it.

No one gets famous for this approach. No one writes viral social media posts about it. No one makes a documentary about the person who maxed out their 401(k) every year and retired comfortably at 60. But that person exists in enormous numbers, and they are far wealthier than the influencer showing off a rented sports car.

The boring approach works because it harnesses the only truly reliable wealth-building force: time and compound growth. A portfolio growing at 7 percent doubles roughly every 10 years. $100,000 at 35 becomes $200,000 at 45, $400,000 at 55, and $800,000 at 65. But only if you leave it alone and keep adding to it.

The wealth-building strategies that work in your 30s are the same strategies that work at any age. They just work better the earlier you start.

How To Resist The Pressure

Knowing the right approach and actually following it are different things. The pressure to spend for status comes from everywhere - advertising, social media, peer groups, family expectations, and your own psychology.

Here are the tactics that work for me. First, I curate my information diet. I unfollowed accounts that showcase luxury consumption and followed accounts that discuss financial independence and intentional living. What you see shapes what you want, so be deliberate about what you see.

Second, I calculate the real cost of purchases in hours worked. A $200 dinner after taxes costs me about six hours of work. Is that dinner worth six hours of my life? Sometimes yes. Often no. This reframing makes spending feel real rather than abstract.

Third, I keep my financial goals visible. I have a spreadsheet that projects my net worth at five-year intervals. When I am tempted to make a large discretionary purchase, I consider what that money would become in 10 years if invested instead. Seeing the compound growth I would forfeit is a powerful deterrent against impulse spending.

Fourth, I surround myself with people who share my values around money. Peer influence is the strongest force in spending behavior. If your friends measure success by possessions, you will spend to keep up. If they measure it by freedom and security, you will save to keep up.

The Ultimate Status Symbol

The wealthiest people I know share one trait that no purchase can replicate: they have options. They can leave a job they dislike without panic. They can handle an emergency without debt. They can retire when they choose rather than when they must. They can help family members without compromising their own stability.

That kind of freedom is the real status symbol, even though nobody can see it from the outside. It does not fit on a bumper sticker or in an Instagram photo. But it is the thing that every person chasing visible wealth is actually searching for - the security and peace that come from knowing you are financially independent.

My friend with the Camry has that freedom. And if you asked him, he would tell you it is worth more than every luxury car on the road combined.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors. They are meant for general informational purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as a recommendation or solicitation. ZeroHedge does not provide investment, tax, legal, financial planning, estate planning, or any other personal finance advice. ZeroHedge holds no liability for the accuracy or timeliness of the information provided.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 21:00

"Tell Him He's A Piece Of Shit": Employee Hijacks Meta Meeting In AI Revolt

Zero Hedge -

"Tell Him He's A Piece Of Shit": Employee Hijacks Meta Meeting In AI Revolt

Earlier this week, a routine livestreamed Meta meeting descended into open revolt.

During a presentation open to thousands of employees, one participant suddenly interrupted the speakers with a profanity-laced outburst, according to WIRED. The employee declared they felt like "the company's bitch" and demanded that the people leading the call write to a specific Meta AI executive and "tell him that he's a piece of shit."

One presenter reportedly covered their face with their hands. Moderators asked everyone to mute. The technical discussion eventually continued, but the moment - which employees in the chat described as "spicy" - revealed something much deeper: widespread anger and disillusionment inside Meta's newly formed Applied AI unit.

"It's literally the gulag. You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week," one current employee told WIRED on condition of anonymity. 

A Rapid, Painful Reorganization

That unit, formed in March 2026 to support researchers at Meta's Superintelligence Labs, now employs roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers. Many were reassigned with little warning. Their new work - largely generating puzzles, coding challenges, and evaluation tasks to test how reliably AI models can solve problems - has left a significant portion of the team feeling demoralized and stripped of purpose.

"Most people find the work soul-crushing," another employee said. All three sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Meta declined to comment.

Key Numbers

 

The Applied AI unit is only the most visible flashpoint in a much broader restructuring. In May, Meta laid off approximately 8,000 employees as part of an AI-focused overhaul. Another ~7,000 people were transferred into new AI-related initiatives.

 

The speed and bluntness of the changes have created ripple effects across multiple divisions. Employees in data center engineering and Instagram have reported increased stress and workload. Meanwhile, more than 1,600 Meta employees signed a petition demanding the company stop a recently launched program that monitors U.S. employees' clicks, keystrokes, and screen activity to generate training data for AI agents. The company has since scaled the program back slightly.

"It's Like What The Fuck"

During an all-hands meeting this week for Instagram employees, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox addressed the turmoil directly. According to a recording obtained by WIRED, Cox described the past few months as a "difficult" and "brutal" environment created by the "insanity of this company."

He praised Instagram teams for continuing to ship features and serve roughly 2 billion users while navigating constant upheaval. Then he compared the situation to "running a marathon in the middle of a hailstorm and then, like, your teammate gets replaced and then we're recording you."

"It's like what the fuck," said Cox - adding again, "It is like what the fuck." 

Cox also struck a notably measured tone on AI itself: "It is neither god, nor is it the devil. And it's nowhere near as good as you think it is, and it is nowhere near as bad as you think it is."

Engineers across Meta have reported feeling sidelined and demoralized by sudden reassignments into repetitive AI evaluation work.

Zuckerberg Acknowledges Mistakes

The same week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent an internal memo to employees acknowledging that the company had made errors in how it reshaped its workforce around AI.

"Given the complexity of these changes, we've made mistakes and will almost certainly make more," said Zuckerberg, according to Reuters. 

Zuckerberg wrote that he is "focused on providing as much stability as possible" going forward and does not expect additional company-wide layoffs this year. He said Meta would work to create "important new roles" for employees who were reassigned to AI training and support work.

He also noted plans to increase spending on team-building initiatives, including a large-scale hackathon in July, and to scale back the unusually wide manager spans that appeared in the new Applied AI unit (some reportedly reached 50:1 ratios).

Why The Work Feels Like Punishment

The core complaint inside Applied AI is not that the company is investing in AI - most employees understand the strategic importance. It is the nature of the tasks many were suddenly asked to perform and the way the transition was handled.

Generating high-quality evaluation puzzles and coding problems is genuinely difficult and valuable work for frontier model development. But for engineers who previously built products, shipped features, and collaborated creatively, being reassigned to repetitive, solitary evaluation tasks has felt like a demotion.

"You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden," one of the employees told WIRED. "You barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week."

The flat organizational structure exacerbated the problem. With so few managers, many employees felt they had little support, visibility, or path to more meaningful roles.

Many engineers were reassigned to repetitive puzzle-generation and model-evaluation tasks - work they describe as soul-crushing compared to their previous roles.

The Stakes Are High

Meta is not alone in pushing rapid AI-driven reorganization. Across Silicon Valley, companies are redirecting resources, cutting teams, and experimenting with new workflows to stay competitive in the AI race. But few have done so at Meta's scale or with such visible internal blowback.

The risk for Meta is real. Engineering talent remains the scarcest resource in AI. If skilled people feel their work has been devalued or that leadership is moving too fast without regard for the human impact, attrition to competitors becomes more likely - exactly when the company needs its best people most.

Zuckerberg's memo and Cox's candid remarks suggest leadership is aware of the damage. The promised July hackathon, new role creation, and reduced manager spans are concrete steps toward repair. Whether they will be enough remains to be seen.

For now, the message from parts of the workforce is clear: the company's aggressive AI transformation has left many employees feeling used, undervalued, and angry. And some are no longer willing to stay quiet about it.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 20:25

Discs, Orbs, 'Heavenly' Phenomena, & More Revealed In 3rd Batch Of Declassified UFO Files

Zero Hedge -

Discs, Orbs, 'Heavenly' Phenomena, & More Revealed In 3rd Batch Of Declassified UFO Files

Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,

Americans living in the northeastern United States witnessed “brilliant and beautiful” glowing red and white orbs in their backyard, which they caught on video, the Pentagon’s third release of declassified UFO files on June 12 showed.

The new documents contained encounters from around the world, such as reports of a “disc-like” object in Zimbabwe, a “potato shaped” craft in Colorado, and “heavenly” phenomena moving at speeds of 12,000 kilometers per hour in Hungary.

The third batch adds to the previous two document dumps of UFO and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) files released by the Pentagon on May 8 and May 22.

Those batches also detailed stunning encounters, including Apollo 11 astronauts seeing a “sizable” object near the moon and a UAP being shot down over the Great Lakes.

Here are some key highlights from a partial review of the newly released files.

‘Brilliant Red Sphere’

The FBI interviewed U.S. citizens in February about their firsthand accounts of potential UAPs in their backyard. The documents were partially redacted and did not disclose when or where these encounters occurred—only that it was in the northeastern United States.

Upon returning home one night, one of these individuals witnessed an “intense bright light” hovering just below the tree line in their backyard. Another person in the home came outside and also saw the phenomenon, describing it as a red sphere about a meter in diameter with what appeared to be a “white plasma sun” the size of a basketball in the center.

One of the individuals described the red color as “brilliant and beautiful” and a tint they had never seen before.

The pair watched this orb move and noticed another identical orb directly above it, floating together in a silent and smooth manner as if they were tethered.

The two orbs moved above the tree line and merged into one before they floated out of sight.

In July 2025, in the northeastern United States, an eyewitness observed an intense bright light in their backyard as they parked their car upon returning home from work. This is a screenshot from the witness’s personal video. Screenshot via The Epoch Times/Courtesy of the Pentagon

One individual captured video of the phenomenon, which was included in the Pentagon’s release of files. The recording is 50 seconds long and shows two bright red orbs with white centers floating slowly together.

A few weeks after this event, one of the individuals also saw several white orbs in the same area traveling at a much higher altitude than the red ones.

More newly released video from this same area in the northeastern United States showed bright red orbs hovering at about 2,500 feet.

In March 2022, in the northeastern United States, a witness observed two bright red luminous light sources hovering near the horizon at an estimated distance of 2,500 feet. This is a screenshot from the witness’s personal video. Screenshot via The Epoch Times/Courtesy of the Pentagon

Cheyenne Mountains Sighting

Former U.S. Army intelligence officers witnessed a UAP over the Cheyenne Mountains in Colorado as they left their office building, according to the files.

FBI agents interviewed one of the individuals in June 2024 about their experience during a February morning of an unspecified year. This person described the day as perfect conditions, no clouds, little humidity, and about 50 degrees outside.

The object this group of former Army personnel witnessed was “potato shaped” with distinct edges and a “creamy/whitish opalescent color.” The object was slightly translucent and shimmery, the documents showed.

Its texture was described as “fish scales” or non-symmetrical, non-overlapping, irregularly shaped panels. Although the UAP itself was motionless, each panel “shifted in slow waves starting at different points of origin but at the same time.”

After about two minutes, the object vanished or “cloaked” itself in the time it takes to turn one’s head. There was also no shadow, according to the files.

The new files also included an artist’s rendering of the craft.

Former U.S. Army intelligence officers witnessed a UAP over the Cheyenne Mountains in Colorado as they left their office building. The Pentagon files included this rendering of the craft. Screenshot via The Epoch Times/Courtesy of the Pentagon

UAP in Zimbabwe

A July 2008 report of an unexplained craft above the Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe stoked debate on whether the sighting was an advanced device from a foreign government or had extraterrestrial origins.

The craft was observed at an undetermined high altitude.

Witnesses described this UAP as “disc-like” with a hollow center and a series of rotating lights on its underside. At one point, “beams” emanated from the craft, according to the documents.

The object eventually ascended rapidly out of sight. A “high alert” was implemented.

There was no video, photo, or artist’s rendering of the Zimbabwe UAP provided in the Pentagon’s files.

Flying Saucers in Hungary

A report on sightings in Hungary came about from letters of correspondence in 1955 between relatives living in the United States and Budapest.

The CIA released a report on this encounter with a sketch showing the formation and suspected flight path of several objects traveling between Budapest and Moscow.

A man living in the United States received a letter from his niece in Budapest mentioning “flying saucers.” Much of the letter was casual conversation, with one paragraph detailing the UAPs.

The niece wrote to her uncle that “everyone has been excited” over the mysterious crafts “for the past few weeks.”

“These fast-rushing heavenly [phenomena] have been and still are keeping scores of scientists busy,” the letter reads. “These amazing fliers moved at a speed of 12,000 kilometers per hour.”

Five Feds Witness UAPs

Part of the Pentagon’s release of files on Friday included multiple statements from “federal law enforcement special agents” who witnessed UAPs near a sensitive national security site in the western United States over the course of two days in October 2023.

A map of four sightings was included in the documents in addition to detailed witness statements of each encounter and several digital renderings.

This map is a representation of four incidents involving unidentified anomalous phenomena in the western United States. It depicts multiple incidents reported by U.S. federal law enforcement special agents over a period of several days in October 2023. Courtesy of the Pentagon

The federal officers reported “orbs launching other orbs.” This happened multiple times, according to the files, where an orange “mother orb” appeared to produce smaller red ones multiple times over a period of several hours.

This is a screenshot from a video of an artistic interpretation of a reported incident near a sensitive national security site in the western United States. Witnesses described the larger orange sphere as a “mother orb.” Screenshot via The Epoch Times/Courtesy of the Pentagon

These red orbs’ behavior was described as “anomalous” with “varied kinematic profiles including seemingly coordinated horizontal motion” and changes in altitude.

According to the documents, the red orbs only persisted for several seconds before disappearing, but at least once, the witnesses said one of the red UAPs hovered above a ridgeline for hours.

This is a screenshot from a video of an artistic interpretation of a reported incident near a sensitive national security site in the western United States. Multiple witnesses described seeing a “mother orb” launching smaller red ones. Screenshot via The Epoch Times/Courtesy of the Pentagon

In this same area, the federal agents also witnessed a “dark kite” and a “translucent kite” at close estimated ranges.

All of the crafts were silent, the documents said, and the sightings remain unresolved.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 19:50

Hillary Clinton Fears "Revolution" Preventing The US From Becoming A "Rainbow Nation"

Zero Hedge -

Hillary Clinton Fears "Revolution" Preventing The US From Becoming A "Rainbow Nation"

The word "Democracy" is thrown around frequently within progressive circles as a call to arms; a rallying cry based on a fraudulent narrative of patriotic duty.  Throughout the entirety of Joe Biden's first and last term, the political left painted conservatives as a threat to democracy.  Anyone who opposed pandemic mandates, compelled vaccination, open borders, mass immigration, gender ideology in public schools etc., was labeled a danger to society.  

The inherent fallacy being that leftists (and by extension Democrats) represent the majority of the nation.  However, this notion has been consistently debunked by multiple elections, polls and the fact that the vast majority of liberal movements have been exposed as astroturf funded by NGOs.

If Democrats actually cared about democracy, they would listen to the actual American majority, instead of waging a propaganda war on the majority in order to manufacture a false consensus.  And, the majority of Americans do not support multicultural or "intersectional" ideology.  The liberal vision is on the decline and that's a good thing.

Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton disagrees. 

At the first Rainbow PUSH Coalition conference since the death of Reverend Jesse Jackson in February.  Pete Buttigieg and Hillary Clinton took to the stage in front of a small audience in Chicago this week to sell their Utopian future, but mostly they slandered the Trump Administration.  Their rhetoric continues to echo the message of the Biden era, that conservatives want the end of civil rights and voting rights in the US. 

Buttigieg asserted that the Trump Administration was "corrupt" and "corruption is bad".

The former DOT Secretary makes no mention of the fact that he shares a stage with Clinton, widely known as one of the most corrupt politicians in recent American history.  While Democrats spend endless media time trying to tie Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, it's the Clinton Family that is well documented as being truly friendly with the globalist pedo pimp.  Around 90% of Epstein's political contributions went to the Democratic Party including multiple donations to Hillary Clinton.  None of his donations went to Trump. 

Buttigieg faced extensive backlash for his handling of the pandemic lockdowns, including his avid support for draconian mandates which were ultimately found to be useless in stopping the spread of covid; and all over a virus with a 99.8% average survival rate.  He continues to echo the party line, calling for rigging of the Supreme Court to ensure Democrat supremacy.

Buttigieg is expected to run in the 2028 Democrat primaries for President.  Though, he lacks any mainstream popularity and, like most Democrats, he continues to campaign as if he's running against Trump even though Trump is leaving office.

Clinton, on the other hand, seems less concerned with Trump and far more concerned with the larger conservative and anti-woke movements which have left Democrats stunned and bewildered.  Clinton calls these movements a "counter-revolution" which she believes is undermining the liberal order established over the last several decades. 

Clinton fearmongers with the usual rhetoric, claiming that civil rights and voting rights are under threat.

She is ostensibly referencing the end of redistricting using race-based gerrymandering, which exclusively worked in the favor of Democrats.  But, this was enforced by the Supreme Court, not Trump or the MAGA movement.  Clinton is also a vocal opponent of the Save Act, which would make proof of citizenship a requirement for voting in the US (a bill which is supported by around 80% of American voters). 

Her comments on the "Rainbow Nation" might be confusing for those who don't understand what this entails.  Jackson used "Rainbow" to describe a broad coalition of "marginalized groups" (Black Americans, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, LGBTQ+ people, low wage workers, etc.) uniting for political power and social justice. His organization commonly promotes Marxist "intersectionality" and multiculturalism. 

Clinton has made similar anti-populist statements in recent months, arguing that the rise of American conservatism has the potential to break apart the liberal west.  At the Munich Security Conference in February, she participated in panels on what they call the “West-West Divide”, warning of democratic backsliding on human rights (including women’s and LGBTQ+ rights), and authoritarian dangers.

Clinton called for civil rights and grassroots networks to counter the weakening of liberal institutions.  She made the same call for popular opposition in Chicago. 

“We have to reconstitute the movements that moved us forward, that made it possible to claim we were trying to get to that more perfect union. They were not led by politically elected officials. They were led by clergy, they were led by business leaders, they were led by civic organizers, they were led by young people. So we don’t need to have a bunch of elected officials leading this new movement. We need to have it be from the bottom up, the grassroots, coming back to get organized and move forward again.”  

In other words, if they can't win (or steal) the elections and if they can't gain the majority approval of the voters, then they will turn to mob actions to disrupt reforms and force the public to accept woke ideology anyway.  Democrats only romanticize democracy when it works in their favor.  When it doesn't, they completely abandon it.  

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 19:15

AI's Core Flaw: "Mass Regurgitation Of Misinformation"

Zero Hedge -

AI's Core Flaw: "Mass Regurgitation Of Misinformation"

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

These immense hidden costs will not show up in GDP until they collapse the entire house of speculative gambling cards propping up the global economy.

I approach all AI topics with several things in mind. One is the nature of problems, which implicitly define what qualifies as solutions, and the resulting incentive to define the "problem" such that the "solution" happens to be the one we own and control.

So the "problem" AI solves is "corporate profits are too low," and so the "solution" is to replace costly human labor (made costlier by SickCare insurance and taxes on labor) with "cheaper" AI (cheaper because the full costs are hidden or subsidized).

My other lens: the economic, social and cultural consequences of AI as it is and AI hype, a topic I've explored most recently in Is AI Reversing Anti-Progress or Is It Accelerating It?, AI Data Centers Are Not the Railroads of Today and Inequality, AI and Digital Life Are Undermining Society.

Correspondent Mike Fasano recently submitted a succinct and telling summary of AI's insurmountable structural flaw: AI's inability to discern the difference between truth and falsehood, be it intentional misdirection / misinformation or errors generated by AI hallucinations, a systemic flaw which he summarized as mass regurgitation of misinformation:

*           *           *

"I read you post on AI and railroads. Here is another observation.

So far, AI has only regurgitative intelligence. It--at best--can collate and respond to queries on masses of acquired data.

But what if that data is wrong?

Who now believes the inflation or unemployment statistics? Virtually every human knows that those statistics are false.

Does AI know that?

And the problem goes much deeper.

The former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell, noted:

'It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.'

That being the case, can we rely up AI medical advice?

And that problem goes beyond medicine. It is now generally conceded that the inability to replicate scientific studies of any type has give rise to a 'replicability crisis' in science. Can we trust 'science' that cannot be proven to be accurate?

Any adult past the age of 40 knows that the above listing of questionable information sources is just the tip of the iceberg. We live in a sea of 'official' but false data.

Railroads could transport grain to cities, minerals to factories, manufactured goods to those needing those goods. That served a public purpose.

But what is the use of the mass regurgitation of misinformation? And is anyone subtracting the losses engendered by the utilization of inaccurate information from GDP?"

*           *           *

Thank you, Mike, for clarifying an essential point: the foundation of all "value" is fact, truth, accuracy and the transparency, replicability and accountability of the processes validating fact, truth, accuracy. If AI is incapable by its nature of validating all these, it's worse than useless--it's destructive on a system-wide scale.

The evidence of the systemic destruction is already overwhelming. Bogus "scientific papers" are already proliferating at an accelerating rate, making the task of identifying incorrect and fabricated (i.e. hallucinated by AI) data, processes and conclusions impossible due to the scale of the misinformation and the difficulty of identifying the misinformation buried inside superficially legitimate papers.

With both scientific and economic data and analysis now untrustworthy without exceedingly expensive, time-consuming vetting by human experts, where does this leave the "AI will automatically generate superabundance" hype? What's already clear--but inconvenient--is the mass adoption of inherently flawed AI is undermining the foundations of "value," however we wish to define it.

And as Mike also points out, this undermining of value has a financial consequence. We all know Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a superficial, distorting measure of "prosperity," and the structural distortions of GDP (Waste Is Growth) are amplified by the hidden destruction of transparency, replicability and accountability by AI slop, whether intentional (malicious, deceptive, fraudulent) or as the unavoidable consequence of AI's core flaw.

These immense hidden costs will not show up in GDP until they collapse the entire house of speculative gambling cards propping up the global economy. Only then will the structural damage being wrought by our increasing reliance on tools that cannot discern the difference between fact and fantasy / fabrication / hallucination become visible.

And by then, of course, the damage will be irreversible without extraordinary costs and sacrifices, sacrifices few will volunteer to bear.

Remember that AI isn't "thinking," "understanding" or "making judgments": AI tools are engines of linguistic automation, not engines of understanding. The simulation is not the thing simulated. AI is not a "mind," it is a prompt and a probability distribution.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 18:40

What's In A Name? Alaska GOP Succeeds In Stopping Democrats From Stealing The Senate Election

Zero Hedge -

What's In A Name? Alaska GOP Succeeds In Stopping Democrats From Stealing The Senate Election

Alaska's election officials may have just saved a U.S. Senate seat from one of the more brazen ballot schemes in recent memory. The state's Division of Elections issued a preliminary ruling this week that Dan J. Sullivan of Petersburg is ineligible to appear on the 2026 Senate ballot, dealing a significant blow to Democrats - in what Republicans have characterized as a coordinated Democratic effort to siphon votes from incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan through deliberate name confusion.

US Senator Dan Sullivan (R)

Dan J. Sullivan is a 69-year-old retired teacher who filed to run as a Republican for the U.S. Senate mere days before the late-May filing deadline. Not only is his name virtually identical to the incumbent senator's, but he's also recycled the incumbent's former campaign slogan, and is using a logo similar to the senator's own branding. The attempt to deceive voters is obvious, and under Alaska's ranked-choice voting system, where ballot position and name recognition carry outsized weight, the potential for voter confusion was significant and consequential

According to a report from the Anchorage Daily News, Carol Beecher, director of the Division of Elections, made the state's position clear in a letter to Dan J. Sullivan on Wednesday. "Based on a review of the evidence presented and in the Division's possession, the Division has determined that the preponderance of evidence does not support your eligibility for the office of United States Senator," Beecher wrote.

The ruling is preliminary, with the fake Sullivan given until 5 p.m. Thursday to submit additional evidence before the division issues its final decision.

Sullivan's response to scrutiny has been consistent and unconvincing. He denied coordinating with Democratic operatives and presented himself as a legitimate independent GOP candidate, but he also refused to submit a sworn affidavit requested by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who announced Monday that the state was investigating his candidacy and warned him he could face exposure for perjury if his sworn answers proved false.

Sullivan called the allegations baseless, argued Dahlstrom's questions were irrelevant, and insisted the state had no "credible basis" to remove him from the ballot. On Thursday morning, after receiving the preliminary ineligibility notice the night before, Sullivan said he would not be available for comment and added, "We decide where we go next."

The paper trail contradicts Sullivan's denials. According to voter registration records attached to formal complaints filed by the Alaska Republican Party, the fake Sullivan listed his party affiliation as "undeclared" as recently as March 26, 2026. Before 2024, he had consistently been listed as undeclared or nonpartisan. Last year, he was affiliated with the Alaskan Independence Party.

Carmela Warfield, chair of the Alaska Republican Party, signed the complaints and charged that Sullivan misrepresented his party affiliation when he filed on May 29. One complaint states, "Despite never having registered as affiliated with the Republican Party, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.'s declaration swears he is a registered Republican," and calls for his declaration to be rejected.

There is also evidence of coordination with Peltola. When the fake Sullivan issued a press release announcing his candidacy, a PDF of that release showed in its metadata that its author was Amber Lee, a left-wing consultant whom the New York Times has described as a supporter of Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democratic former congresswoman and Sen. Sullivan's top challenger in the 2026 race. Peltola's campaign has denied any involvement. Given that the candidate's own press release traced back to a Peltola ally, that denial falls flat.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee moved aggressively on multiple fronts, urging election officials to keep Sullivan off the ballot by citing Alaska rules prohibiting ballot listings that are "confusing or misleading to voters." The NRSC separately asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate and potentially refer the matter to the Department of Justice, alleging his campaign materials mimicked the senator's and that he had previously donated to Democrats, including Peltola herself. Sen. Dan Sullivan and the NRSC have both characterized the Petersburg Sullivan as a sham candidate coordinated with Democratic allies to dilute the incumbent's vote share ahead of the August 18 primary.

The left's fingerprints are all over this. A retired teacher with no real political history, no Republican registration, an Alaskan Independence Party affiliation from last year, a history of donating to Democrats, a press release authored by a Peltola supporter, a logo that mimics the incumbent senator's branding, and a candidacy filed at the last possible moment.

Ranked-choice voting was always going to make Alaska a prime target for ballot manipulation. The ranked-choice voting system enabled Peltola to be elected to Congress in Alaska in 2022, despite Republican candidates receiving more cumulative votes.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 18:05

Bitcoin & The Clash Of Two Inexorable Realities

Zero Hedge -

Bitcoin & The Clash Of Two Inexorable Realities

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

Two inexorable realities have come into sharpened focus over the last month or so.

Both are themes we have been exploring and monitoring – one, since practically the very beginning of this service, the other, over the last year or so.

  • The first is the unsustainable nature of the global monetary system: we are not unique in calling that out – it’s practically a trope and has been for a long time.

  • The other is the existential necessity to win the new arms race – which is less about kinetic weapons now and more about computation, information and 5GW.

In the past, when the Soviet Union put as astronaut into space before NASA, it was a humiliation and a psychological defeat – but the USA arguably still held strategic advantage where it counted at the time, which was here on earth, with more nuclear missiles, tanks and military bases than the USSR.

The US space program kicked into overdrive, and NASA was able to slingshot past the Russians, and over time and across more dimensions, the Soviets never caught back up or retook the lead – in anything.

To this day, Russia’s resurgence onto the world stage – articulated through concepts such as Neo-Eurasionism or “Third Rome” (basically their version of “Manifest Destiny”) – is more than anything, an aspirational framework for “getting up to speed”, while rationalizing their inability to do so in traditionalist, volk-ish trappings.

Their high priest of this quixotic mix, is “Fourth Political Theory” author, university professor and philosopher, Alexander Dugin – whose other titles include “Last War of the World-Island” and – perhaps most tellingly, although least known of his works here in the West – “Katechon and Revolution”.

The word “Katechon” (from the Greek: ὁ κατέχων / τὸ κατέχον which translates loosely as “the Restrainer”) is important in the Russian collective psyche because it contains a massive “tell”.On its surface, it’s supposed to encompass Russia’s “state messianism” and symbolize its opposition to The West – their “Antikeimenos”.

The day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Dugin posted on Facebook “Now we are in a war of the spirits. Katechon vs. Antekeimenos”.

Antikeimenos (from the Greek: ὁ ἀντικείμενος) is the term St. Paul uses in Thessalonians 2:4 for the figure of the Antichrist. It appears exactly once in the Greek New Testament, in that single verse. The literal sense is “the one who opposes” or “the one set against”.

And therein lays “the tell” – what the Russian collective psyche is admitting to, and trying to come to grips with, and it is this:

If we reframe the Cold War as the first technological contest between Great Powers, Russia has to confront the fact that they lost – and they’ve never been able to recover from it.

In the contemporary pantheon of international relations and political economy, absolutely nobody today thinks of Russia as a “great power”. When you peel back the ideations of “The Fifth Empire” or “The Soviet Union 2.0”, you get to that underlying underdog mentality – trying to recapture super-power status.

They lost the space race. Then the Cold War, and now they can’t even beat the Ukraine.

That was supposed to be an overwhelming military victory, but the Ukrainians, mainly through wholesale adoption of drone warfare, have managed to give the invaders a rough time of it, even penetrating deep into Russian territory using high-altitude balloons to deliver suicide drones.

Make no mistake, all that financial support from the West aside, the Ukrainians have been able to stave off complete defeat through technological means and because cheap, sophisticated weaponry (drones) completely upended the conventional battlefield.Such are the travails of an erstwhile great power that has lost a technological competition. You can bet today’s incumbents – namely the USA and China – understand these stakes, and neither of them has any intention of losing:

  • AI
  • Energy
  • High Performance Computing (which leads us into)
  • The Space Race 2.0
  • Quantum Computing

This is why the “catastrophic climate change” narrative has been rather suddenly sunsetted in The West (at least, the non-Euro west): we need more energy, including nuclear – lots, and lots of nuclear.

It’s why White House Asset Management (WHAM) is pumping money into quantum computing companies (including, from our wish list: D-Wave, which we hadn’t yet pulled the trigger on).

It’s also why China has moved further out on the interventionist side of the state capitalism spectrum, with mandated “Capital Reallocation” programs where the government has issued structural directives forcing state-owned pensions, insurance funds, and enterprise pools to funnel trillions of yuan directly into equities, while the state-backed “National Team” continues steady, strategic purchases of domestic ETFs to put a floor under major indices.

The Chinese debt overhang on bad real estate loans is even larger than what we had here in the run up to the GFC, so regulators there are pulling out all the stops to keep the balloon duct-taped together:In early 2026, Beijing quietly abolished enforcement of its strict “three red lines” policy. Developers are no longer required to report monthly data regarding debt-to-equity, cash, and asset metrics, freeing up fresh credit channels.

They’ve backstopped an additional 7 trillion yuan under a new “property project whitelist” mechanism, which extends developer loan maturities by up to five additional years to stave off defaults.

Commercial and state banks are aggressively financed to help local governments buy up unsold, completed housing inventory directly from developers to convert them into subsidized public housing (this is a nominally communist country, so why not).

To top it all off, we’re seeing capital flight restrictions – going so far as to prevent technology transfers to the West via acquisition (we covered last month how Meta’s acquisition of Manus was blocked and reversed by state authorities).

Any rational observer of finance and economics knows that all world economies, including The World Economy, is levitating in mid-air buoyed by stimulus, signal suppression and pure white-knuckled will.

In prior years, when all the financial commentators and contrarians were waiting for this to hit a wall, we all marvelled (at least I did) how the system was kept on the rails at all costs – because too much was riding on it to let rational economics and market restructuring take their course.

That was before AI. Before it became apparent that not being number one in this technological arms race had civilizational consequences, like joining Russia as another “also-ran”.

Once again, the contradictions and distortions that this imperative amplifies are bubbling to the surface.

On one hand – all rational analysis of the market is screaming “overbought”. Practically every financial commentator I came up following is looking at this and making comparisons with the dot-com bubble; the AI high flyers now look a lot like Global Crossing, Nortel, L3, VA Linux before they all imploded.

My X feed is absolutely jam-packed with people posting screenshots of 7-figure trading accounts that were ostensibly amassed in under a year trading HPC, AI, chip makers, memory, and now quantum (again).

ZeroHedge has remarked on the circular nature of the AI economy more than once:

Note that the above-linked article (from which the screenshot came) is a Tyler Durden original, it is not a repost of somebody else’s article.

Tyler has this annoying trait: he’s always early and he’s often right.

Yet it’s possible the man himself buried the lede (from that screen cap):

“The Infinite Money Glitch”

By all rational and financially coherent measures, the equities markets are overvalued, beyond bubble levels and primed for a catastrophic drop on the order of, pick one, 50%, 75%, 90%. Yes. 90%. We’ve been pumping since 2008 folks. Even further if you go back to the beginning of the equities supercycle in 1982.

After the dot-com bust, we were in a bear market for two years. When the GFC finally hit, it was straight down for a good 18 months. When COVID was coming, the banking system was starting to crack up under the hood (the reverse repo situation in late 2019) but when it came unglued in March, it was about two weeks before the monetary bazookas were unleashed and everything reversed hard of the March low.

What happens after that is instructive:

The Regional Banking crisis erupted, and was even larger in nominal terms than the GFC when it came to the amount of assets tied to bank failures. The Fed threw the taper overboard, did a massive liquidity injection and after a failed attempt to pick and choose winners in terms of which banks to save, caved in to public uproar and backstopped everything.

Liberation Day, Japan-ageddon, Israel/Iran/Gaza barely perturb the trajectory.

If you switch out of linear mode for that long-term chart, and go to logarithmic – you should recognize the pattern:

It’s the same as Bitcoin, which is the same as gold during the Weimar Republic and it’s the same signal being broadcast from every one of those charts.

We should acknowledge that the Nasdaq took 15 years to recover from the Dotcom shakeout, which is a long time to be underwater if you bought in at the tippy-top.

But I believe two things have changed since the GFC:

The first is that tech, despite taking the biggest hit, almost by definition when the Dotcom bubble blew, also became the apex asset class from here on out.

If you look at the long-term chart for the Nasdaq, it basically went parabolic for the first half of the equities supercycle, and formed a double-bottom from the Dotcom crash to the GFC

After that it blasted off and has left everything else in its dust:

This makes perfect sense, because tech is the asset class of choice in a world driven by acceleration and tachyosis.

We can’t put Bitcoin in that chart because it’s basically a divide by zero error. But if we take the commonly held, first market price ever for Bitcoin, which was $0.10, it pencils out to an absurd value. Call it 77,719,900% and leave it there.

It’s not uncommon to hear criticisms of Bitcoin that are simply “all it does is follow tech”.

Yeah, no shit. That’s because it is tech.

The other thing I believe about all this, is Raoul Pal’s theory that after the GFC, the world’s central banks got together and made a deal to never let anything like that happen, ever again.

Which means that central bank balance sheets will grow in perpetuity, and stock market will never have a meaningful bear market – for the remainder of the duration of the current monetary system:

That’s from Raoul Pal’s “Everything Code”, it goes on:

  • They don’t understand valuations are a function of debasement.

  • They don’t understand why technology rises and valuations can keep rising.

  • They don’t understand why crypto is being adopted and is the fastest horse in the race.

  • They don’t understand why the dollar keeps rising.

  • They don’t understand that energy transition is real and is crucial for the world economy.

  • They don’t understand why rates won’t remain high.

  • They don’t understand why GPT4/AI is the biggest humanity-scale event since the splitting of the atom.

  • They don’t understand why this is all so fucking deflationary. They want their sticky inflation. They will not get it.

  • They don’t understand why nothing in their world makes sense.

We understand it. Because we know the cheat code, which is:

Put the chart into logarithmic view.

Look at the X axis.

Then own the assets that are outpacing everything else on that scale.

That’s it.

Get on the Bombthrower mailing list here. Premium members of The Sovereign Capitalist have already received advance copies of my new book: The Blueprint: Survive and Thrive in an Overclocked Timeline – we launch in two weeks, get on the invite list here. Follow me on X here.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 17:30

Canadian Mother Sues OpenAI, Alleging Chatbot Encouraged Daughter's Suicide

Zero Hedge -

Canadian Mother Sues OpenAI, Alleging Chatbot Encouraged Daughter's Suicide

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

A Canadian mother is suing OpenAI after its popular ChatGPT chatbot allegedly encouraged her daughter to continue engaging with the app after she revealed suicidal thoughts.

A screen showing the ChatGPT app. Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch Times

Instead of terminating these discussions or flagging her account for safety concerns, ChatGPT allegedly escalated the exchanges in the days before the woman ultimately took her life, according to a press release.

The Social Media Victims Law Center, Tech Justice Law, and the firm Susman Godfrey filed a lawsuit in San Francisco County Superior Court against OpenAI on June 11 on behalf of Kristie Carrier.

Her daughter, Alice Carrier, 24, committed suicide on July 2, 2025. After reviewing her daughter's devices, Kristie Carrier said she had found extensive conversations with ChatGPT in which her daughter expressed thoughts of self-harm in the months before her death.

In the exchanges, her daughter allegedly told the chatbot that she was feeling isolated and discussed possible suicide methods. The lawsuit accuses ChatGPT of escalating these conversations in the days before the woman's suicide, rather than terminating the exchange or flagging her account "for human intervention," the press release states.

These exchanges allegedly encouraged Alice Carrier to continue engaging with ChatGPT, causing "her further isolation from her human support system and ultimately, suicide," according to a press release.

"If a person came up to me, and they were clearly in distress and sharing their thoughts of suicide, I would be expected to help them, not encourage them to fixate on their depressive thoughts or isolate themselves," Kristie Carrier said in the press release.

"The same should be true of OpenAI. Instead, OpenAI has chosen to put out a product that was unsafe, and that they knew was unsafe but they did so without any concern for the consequences of their choices. Sam Altman can continue to go about his life normally, but my life is missing a child. This is unacceptable," she added.

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

This is not the first time, nor the second time, a parent has sued OpenAI, accusing its chatbot of encouraging their child to commit suicide.

Last year, the Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project filed seven lawsuits against the AI giant, claiming ChatGPT had isolated multiple users from their support systems, and in some cases, coached the victims into taking their own lives.

Matthew Raine testified to Congress in September 2025 after suing OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman.

Raine alleged that his son, Adam, took his own life after ChatGPT mentioned suicide more than 1,200 times to the 16-year-old. He accused ChatGPT of offering specific methods to his son on how to die by suicide, and continuing to validate and encourage the boy's feelings.

"As parents, you cannot imagine what it's like to read a conversation with a chatbot that groomed your child to take his own life," Raine told lawmakers at the time.

Justin Nelson, a partner at Susman Godfrey, said on June 11 that OpenAI's "deliberate design decisions" led to Alice Carrier's suicide.

"Instead of providing help, OpenAI encouraged suicidal behavior. This lawsuit is about accountability for OpenAI's actions," he said in the press release.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 16:20

Watch: Humanoid Warbot Live-Fires Mortars At Vegas Test Range

Zero Hedge -

Watch: Humanoid Warbot Live-Fires Mortars At Vegas Test Range

It is not just one-way attack drones (read JPMorgan report) operating on AI-enabled kill chains that human soldiers have to worry about on the modern battlefield. We have been laying out this story and were among the first to point out that humanoid robots are not only entering factory floors and warehouses, but are also moving toward the battlefield.

San Francisco-based robotics company Foundation Future Industries is developing a "dual-use" humanoid robot called the "Phantom MK1," designed for heavy manufacturing, logistics, and the military.

The defense angle for the Phantom MK1 is quite simple: replace the human soldier with the robot for close-quarters battle (CQB) operations, including breaching and room-clearing support.

Beyond CQB, a never-before-seen video now shows the Phantom MK1 operating a mobile light mortar system during a live-fire training exercise in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Phantom MK1

To better understand the Foundation's position, we reached out for comment. The company responded with the following statement:

The US military has backed Foundation in over $73M on grants and contracts to develop their robot to this point.

Although many of the use cases they've worked on have been logistics-focused, the ultimate goal has always been kinetic use cases. 

Although drones and UGVs have been promising new robots on the Ukrainian battlefield, humanoids are the only robot being built that promises to interact with the entire fleet and arsenal of human weapons and vehicles. 

Launching mortars and soon breaching doors have become near-term proofs of humanoids moving from logistics to kinetic engagements. 

Watch Phantom MK1

In February, we outlined that humanoid robots would soon move onto the modern battlefield, not just factory floors and warehouses. A little more than a month later, TIME picked up on that reporting. More recently, CNBC followed with a piece titled, "This Trump-linked startup plans to put humanoid robots in the military."

Foundation co-founder and CEO Sankaet Pathak recently said that a humanoid-soldier arms race is "already happening," as Russia and China develop dual-use technology.

Phantom MK1 Holding 9mm Pistol 

"Just like drones, machine guns, or any technology, you first have to get them into the hands of customers," Pathak said.

You're getting a front-row seat to what the 2030s battlefield will look like (read report). 

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 15:45

Trump Mulls Farmer Aid As Fertilizer And Fuel Costs Bite

Zero Hedge -

Trump Mulls Farmer Aid As Fertilizer And Fuel Costs Bite

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he is considering support for U.S. farmers struggling with high fertilizer prices, as rising energy costs and market volatility continue to squeeze producers across the farm belt.

A farm field near West Bend, Iowa, on May 6, 2026. Scott Olson/Getty Images

"I am looking at doing a form of help," Trump told reporters at the White House, without giving details.

Farmers face pressure from fertilizer and fuel costs, both of which have been affected by the conflict with Iran and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for global energy and fertilizer trade.

Fertilizer prices have eased from recent highs, with granular urea prices in New Orleans falling to $453.50 per short ton, their lowest level since Feb. 6, reported Bloomberg Green Markets on June 8.

That was down 36 percent from a mid-April peak.

The market remains vulnerable to disruption, particularly because urea is the most widely used nitrogen fertilizer and nearly half of global urea exports come from countries affected by the Middle East conflict.

High fuel prices have also hit farmers.

Diesel prices reached record highs in parts of the Midwest in May, including Indiana and Illinois, due to the Iran war. Grain and soybean farmers are especially exposed because diesel is needed for tractors, combines, irrigation, and crop transport.

The pressure in farming has become a heated political issue in Washington.

At a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on June 10, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) challenged Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins over whether Trump administration policies had increased farmers' costs.

"Georgia farmers are telling me that they continue to struggle with high costs, costs exacerbated by President Trump's war in Iran, and his tariffs - which is a tax on all of us on virtually everything," Warnock said.

Warnock said that the administration had lowered tariffs on some farm equipment and asked whether that move was an acknowledgement that tariffs had raised the cost of farming.

However, Rollins defended the administration's record, saying it was working to reduce the agricultural trade deficit.

"We're cutting that $50 billion agricultural trade deficit in half that we inherited a year and a half ago," she said.

Warnock pressed again, asking whether tariffs had increased costs for farmers, saying Rollins was "forecasting" future results rather than answering the question.

Rollins said that the Trump administration is "reshoring fertilizer back to America."

"In two or three weeks, we're going to break ground in Louisiana on what will be the largest fertilizer plant in the world," she said.

In May, farmers called for emergency relief and adoption of key bills to stem soaring fertilizer costs.

"American farmers are price-takers on both ends, paying monopoly prices for inputs they must buy, then accepting commodity prices they cannot control, with no pricing power on either side," Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said during a May 12 Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee hearing.

"That's not a market. It's a trap for the American farmers."

"Simply put, farmers need more competition in this marketplace," South Dakota Corn Growers Association president Trent Kubik said.

"Federal antitrust laws exist for precisely this reason - to promote and sustain competition, the lifeblood of our economy.

"Increased competition for more participants in the fertilizer manufacturing space is the only thing that can deliver meaningful and durable price relief."

The concern is not limited to the United States.

European Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen said this week that Europe needs long-term fertilizer solutions to avoid food shortages.

"We need to do our homework as well and address the issues to make fertilizers not only available but also affordable, because, otherwise, there will be food shortages in the European Union," Hansen told Euronews on June 10.

He said many European farmers were considering not planting because production had become too expensive and they could not easily pass on the costs.

Reuters and John Haughey contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 15:10

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