Zero Rss

California Ex-Police Official Tops State Payroll With $1.2 Million Payday

Former Redlands Police Deputy Chief Travis Martinez received nearly $1.2 million in wages in 2025, the highest reported compensation for any city employee in California, according to newly released data from the State Controller's Office and reporting by the New York Post.

Payroll records show Martinez collected $81,804 in regular pay, $890,467 in other compensation and $231,099 in lump-sum payments before retiring in April. The city also contributed roughly $55,900 toward his retirement and health benefits, bringing his total compensation package to about $1.26 million.

The State Controller's Office publishes annual payroll data for public employees, while public records compiled by Transparent California identified the employee as Martinez.

The Post writes that according to the Orange County Register, the unusually large payout stemmed from a settlement that resolved a lengthy dispute between Martinez and the city. He had been on paid administrative leave for about 18 months before retiring in April 2025. As part of the agreement, Martinez retired and dropped a legal claim against the city in exchange for a settlement reportedly worth about $872,000.

In a 2023 claim, Martinez alleged city officials retaliated against him after he reported what he described as misconduct within the police department. Among other allegations, he said he raised concerns about efforts to conceal evidence related to a fatal Metrolink train crash and reported claims of sexual misconduct involving then-Deputy Chief Mike Reiss to the FBI after concluding the matter was not being properly addressed internally.

Martinez remained on paid leave until his retirement. Separately, allegations against Reiss have resulted in multiple legal settlements for the city. Reiss retired in 2023 after being accused of grooming and sexually harassing several department employees, while former Police Chief Chris Catren retired days earlier, denying any connection to the controversy.

Over the past three years, Redlands has approved more than $3.3 million in settlements related to sexual harassment lawsuits involving Reiss. In his legal filing, Martinez described his 29-year career as exemplary and alleged he was repeatedly denied promotions because he refused to overlook misconduct within the department.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 21:35

Congressman Outraged After Brief Detention By Gun-Wielding Israeli Settlers In West Bank Visit

Via The Cradle

A group of extremist Jewish settlers equipped with US-made M4 rifles detained US lawmaker Ro Khanna and his group during their visit this week to the southern occupied West Bank, the Democratic representative has disclosed.

"We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed; they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it," Khanna told Reuters on Thursday.  "And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road." Khanna said, adding, "And then they call the IDF and ​the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans."

via Reuters

Khanna's aide, Cameron Kasky, said the delegation was held for over an hour near Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian hamlet ethnically cleansed by Israeli settlers in 2023, before appealing to the US Embassy in Jerusalem to free them. 

Khanna's visit to the occupied West Bank comes as support for Israel splits Democrats ahead of the US midterm elections in November, with the issue contributing to primary defeats for incumbent lawmakers financed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Israel's favorability rating among Democratic voters has fallen from 59 percent in 2018 to 22 percent in May 2026, according to recent polls. 

The US lawmaker's confrontation with extremist settler groups occurs amid a broader campaign of state-supported settler violence that, by mid-2026, has escalated into systematic ethnic cleansing and land theft in the occupied West Bank. 

As of July 2026, illegal settler outposts effectively control 18 percent of the occupied West Bank, following an "unprecedented" expansion directly backed by the Israeli government.

Former Israeli officials have characterized the current escalation as a "systematic campaign" of "Jewish terrorism" intended to facilitate de facto annexation of the Palestinian territories.

An Oxfam analysis based on UN data revealed that since 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 1,244 Palestinians, exceeding the total from the previous 17 years combined, and forcibly displaced nearly 46,000 people.

Israeli settlers, brandishing American made M4s, detained me & other Americans on my trip to Palestine.

When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers & continued our detention.

They made a huge mistake.

You will be hearing more soon. https://t.co/rZw8bRAn64 pic.twitter.com/4z50Ye4I7K

— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) July 11, 2026

Over 540 settler attacks were reported in the first quarter of 2026 alone, alongside a record 925 movement obstacles that restrict Palestinian life. 

Amnesty International concluded, based on independent investigations, that the Israeli government is implementing a policy of ethnic cleansing, supported by digital evidence, satellite imagery, and field investigations. 

* * *

More of Rep. Khanna's account of what happened...

Ro Khanna said he was detained by Israeli settlers armed with US-made rifles during a West Bank visit this week that the Democratic lawmaker cast as an unfiltered look at the toll of Israeli occupation as he weighs a 2028 presidential run https://t.co/1cLLaCQrOf pic.twitter.com/Dw8QqJNk0j

— Reuters (@Reuters) July 11, 2026 Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 21:00

Guggenheim AI Survey Finds Adoption Surging Across Large IT Enterprises As Mass Layoff Fears Fall Flat

Building on Goldman's estimate that AI adoption across corporate America currently stands at roughly 20.6% and could rise to 24% by year-end, a Guggenheim Securities survey of 150 large-enterprise IT professionals found that 81% of respondents have already deployed AI agents. Anthropic and OpenAI are leading adoption among AI-native platforms, reinforcing the view that the enterprise chatbot and frontier-model battle is increasingly becoming a two-pony race.

The survey found that enterprise adoption of AI is quickly accelerating, with 81% of respondents already deploying chatbots.

About 42% of employees actively use AI for roughly 22% of the workday, resulting in an estimated 18% productivity gain.

According to respondents, AI accounts for an average of roughly 19% of corporate IT budgets, with spending concentrated in software development, data analytics, and IT operations. About half of respondents expect AI to become a separate budget line, while 37% of those firms plan to fund it in part through incremental spending beyond existing IT allocations.

The survey also provided more evidence of token cost concerns among respondents:

On average, respondents anticipate that AI will have a positive impact on their company's operating margin. Furthermore, respondents anticipate this impact to accelerate to 3.1% in 2027. We also note that our data indicates more respondents anticipate mid-to-high single- digit decreases in 2027 vs. 2026, which may be indicative of token costs outweighing realized benefits from AI adoption. With that being said, this is still significantly outweighed by an anticipated benefit from AI.

Recall the recent tokenmaxxing fiasco and the mysterious $500 million Claude bill, Uber capping AI coding spend after burning through its entire 2026 agentic budget in just four months, and UBS checks showing token costs have become a live issue for roughly 60% of enterprise customers. One company received its first AI invoice and heard leadership respond bluntly: "We don't have the money for this."

Related:

• 'Out Of The Magnificent 7, Into China': The AI Trade's Token Bill Is Finally Coming Due
• The Token Revolt Goes Mainstream: Palo Alto CEO Demands 90% AI Price Drop

On headcount, respondents reported an average 2.5% reduction tied to AI, far from the apocalyptic mass-layoff forecasts that dominated headlines earlier this year.

Marc Andreessen recently dismissed the narrative of sweeping AI-driven job cuts as "fake," and Guggenheim's findings lend some support to that view: AI is improving productivity and easing labor constraints, but it has yet to trigger mass layoffs.

Here are more AI adoption trends across the corporate world, offered in a recent note by Goldman analyst Sarah Dong... 

Read here.

However, JPMorgan takes a different view of the AI adoption trend. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 20:25

DARPA's Chilling Pre-COVID Blueprint: Predict, Manufacture, & Deploy Pandemics On Demand

Authored by Jon Fleetwood, via Substack,

A sprawling, multi-institution effort for "predicting" future pathogen characteristics, developing vaccines "in advance of need," and building the very systems intended to validate those predictions.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spent the early 2010s constructing what may have been the most ambitious predictive vaccine-development infrastructure ever attempted: a sprawling, multi-institution effort designed to determine the future characteristics of purported pathogens before they emerged and ultimately use those predictions to develop drugs and vaccines before they were needed.

The program, known as PROPHECY—short for Pathogen Defeat—was announced in 2010 under Broad Agency Announcement DARPA-BAA-10-93 and was managed by DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office.

DARPA itself described the vaccine-centric purpose of the program unambiguously.

According to the agency: “The Prophecy (Pathogen Defeat) program will explore the evolution of viruses in the hopes of predicting viral mutations and ultimately developing drugs and vaccines in advance of need.”

The effort was not limited to coronaviruses, influenza, or any other single disease category.

DARPA repeatedly stated that the goal was understanding: “the natural evolution of any virus.”

The result was a massive architecture that brought together machine learning researchers, statisticians, bioinformaticians, computational biologists, laboratory scientists, surveillance specialists, universities, contractors, and national laboratories into a single “predictive” framework.

Yesterday, this website reported that DARPA’s PROPHECY program expanded into the laboratory of coronavirus researcher Ralph Baric years before the COVID-19 pandemic and nearly a decade before the DARPA/DEFUSE proposal documented all three defining structural features of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein prior to the outbreak.

DARPA Wanted to Turn Vaccine Development from Reactive to Predictive

DARPA openly believed that existing vaccine development operated backwards.

The agency described the modern pharmaceutical model as: “observational and reactive.”

PROPHECY was intended to replace that model with one that was: “predictive and preemptive.”

Rather than waiting for future purported disease threats to appear before beginning the process of characterization and countermeasure development, DARPA sought systems capable of determining the characteristics of future pathogen populations in advance.

Everything in PROPHECY flowed from that objective.

Building the Blueprint Before the Pathogen

DARPA’s ambitions extended far beyond outbreak forecasting.

The agency stated: “DARPA seeks to achieve the ability to successfully predict the natural evolution of any virus, via platforms and algorithms which are capable of monitoring rare advantageous viral events…”

The program sought systems capable of determining:

• future mutations,
• future reassortments,
• future genetic events,
• the order in which mutations would emerge,
• genotype-to-phenotype relationships,
• and ultimately the characteristics of future pathogen populations.

DARPA acknowledged: “there is at present no reliable capability to predict viral reassortment or mutations responsible for the emergence of new viral strains.”

Its proposed solution was: “An investigative platform to predict mutations and possibly reassortments in advance of their occurrence.”

The agency further explained that PROPHECY sought: “predictive algorithms of viral evolution that are informed and validated experimentally using high throughput biological platforms…” and: “the integration of a viral evolution platform with an algorithm that predicts mutations which confer an evolutionary advantage to the viral population.”

Among the formal requirements of the program was the ability to: “reproducibly predict the genomic, proteomic, and/or functional attributes of the final viral population.”

DARPA also sought to determine: “the rate and order of mutation acquisition” as well as: “the correlation of genotype to phenotype.”

The objective was not merely individual mutations.

It was the endpoint population itself.

Prediction Was Only the First Layer

PROPHECY was never designed to stop at prediction.

DARPA required participants to construct what it called: “biological validation systems” and repeatedly emphasized: “testing and validation of the system and algorithm.”

The BAA instructed performers to: “Perform a ‘real world’ test of the predictive algorithm and biological validation system…”

The purpose of that exercise was to determine whether researchers could: “reproducibly predict the genomic, proteomic, and/or functional attributes of the ending viral population.”

DARPA further instructed participants to: “develop a research strategy and solicit collaborations from partners” that would assist in: “applying their predictive methodology to surveillance data from the real world.”

The architecture described by PROPHECY therefore extended beyond prediction alone.

The program sought to construct systems capable not only of generating future pathogen blueprints, but also of attempting to validate those predictions experimentally and through subsequent observational frameworks.

Bottom Line

Amid COVID-19 debates, public attention has focused on later programs such as DEFUSE, ADEPT, pandemic mRNA platforms, and Operation Warp Speed.

But PROPHECY confirms that by 2010, DARPA was openly attempting to build a generalized predictive infrastructure capable of deciding the future characteristics of purported pathogens, using those predictions to enable drugs and vaccines in advance, and constructing systems intended to validate those predictions experimentally and through later observational frameworks.

Most importantly, the effort was never intended for a single disease.

PROPHECY sought to build this capability for: “any virus.”

Whether viewed as predictive biodefense, anticipatory genomics, preemptive countermeasure development, or something else, the architecture described by DARPA followed a remarkably consistent sequence:

• vaccines as the objective;
• future pathogen blueprints as the enabling technology;
• “validation” systems as the final layer.

That architecture may ultimately prove to be one of the most consequential and least understood developments in the history of modern biodefense research.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 19:50

DHS Deports Convicted Child Rapist Gov. Tim Walz Pardoned

The Department of Homeland Security deported Tou Lue Vang on Friday, the Laotian national Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pardoned last month in an effort to keep him in the country.

Vang, 42, entered the United States illegally and built a life in Minnesota that included, by his own admission, sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty in 2006 to first-degree criminal sexual conduct after admitting he abused the girl over four years, starting in 2002. When police arrested him in 2005, he offered no denial. Instead, he told investigators that marrying and having sex with girls as young as 12 was a cultural practice.

The Department of Homeland Security said Vang also offered his victim $10 to stay quiet while the abuse continued.

By pleading guilty, Vang avoided prison, but lost legal status. A judge issued him a final removal order in October 2006, and under any normal enforcement regime, that would have been the end of the story. Instead, Vang stayed in the country for nearly two decades, until Trump administration agents caught up with him last year through Operation Metro Surge, a Minnesota-based immigration enforcement effort.

Records show Vang applied for a pardon in July 2025, anticipating his inevitable deportation. Walz granted it through the state's three-member pardon board, which also includes Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota Chief Justice Natalie Hudson. The pardon wiped Vang's conviction from his record entirely.

"The Minnesota Board of Pardons made a unanimous decision to grant Tou Vang this pardon after an exhaustive process which included a statement of support for the pardon from the victim, a recommendation to grant the pardon from the Clemency Review Commission and a large number of community support letters," Ellison's office said in a statement.

The New York Times noted that Democratic governors "have long faced scrutiny for pardoning immigrants with criminal records who have served their sentences, in an effort to slow or halt their deportations. They often weigh a number of factors as part of their decision, including the severity of the crime," and added that "Mr. Vang's situation is notable in that it involves a sex offense against a child, a type of crime that is widely reviled."

The Department of Homeland Security condemned the decision to pardon him.

"These are the criminal illegal aliens [Walz] and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting," Lauren Bis, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. "Tou Lue Vang lost his legal status following his conviction for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl."

While the pardon effectively removed the conviction that was the basis for his deportation, the Department of Homeland Security announced Friday that ICE had taken Vang into custody and removed him from the United States despite the efforts of Walz and Ellison.

.@ICEgov has DEPORTED Tou Vang, the illegal alien CHILD RAPIST @GovTimWalz pardoned in an attempt to allow him to remain in our country. While Walz and his fellow sanctuary politicians fight to protect heinous criminals like this, we will continue putting the safety of the…

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) July 10, 2026

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the arrest himself in a video posted to X. "Just weeks ago, a convicted sex offender and a foreign national was shielded from deportation by the Governor of Minnesota," Rubio said. "Laotian national Tou Lue Vang was convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl in the state of Minnesota. He even tried to pay his victim for her silence. And he called his heinous crimes a minor thing." Rubio noted the pardon came "just days before this foreign sex offender was scheduled to be deported," and said Walz "issued him a pardon setting him free to once again endanger the children of America." He described the response in plain terms. "This week I revoked his legal status in the United States and as a result, federal agents took him into custody. And as of today, he has been removed from the United States. Because of our action, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any American ever again." Rubio closed with a broader point about the arrangement voters are being asked to accept. "Americans must never be forced by their elected leaders to live alongside foreign sex criminals who have no right to begin with to reside in our country. This administration will always stand with the American people and defend them from violent criminals."

Laotian national Tou Lue Vang was convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl in Minnesota. He was set to be deported until @GovTimWalz issued him a pardon. Then, I revoked his legal status. @ICEgov has removed him from the U.S. and he will never endanger another…

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) July 10, 2026

The White House was even more blunt. "This case exposes the depravity of the Radical Left: they will literally pardon child rapists and defy federal law to protect criminal illegals," it said in a Friday statement.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 19:15

The Real Grid Crisis Is A State Policy Problem Dressed Up As A Market Failure

Authored by Todd Snitchler via RealClearEnergy,

There's a critique of PJM making the rounds: PJM - the largest grid operator in the United States - is too big. There are too many state interests at play, and PJM doesn't have the ability to function cohesively or quickly enough. FERC even scheduled a governance technical conference this month to examine whether PJM's stakeholder structure can move fast enough to respond to demand. The reality is that policy disagreements at the state level are dressed up as a procedural defect with the grid, opening the way for critics to point their reforms at the wrong target.

Disagreements at the state level are just what you'd expect, pitting those that generate enough power to export against those that depend on imports. Pennsylvania is PJM's energy workhorse, shipping out roughly a quarter of everything it generates. Illinois, West Virginia, and Michigan also produce more than they consume. The others - Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware - are net importers, and increasingly so as data centers expand across their footprints.

Exporters like Pennsylvania that are rich in nuclear, gas, and coal generation have fundamentally different interests in capacity pricing and transmission cost allocation from an importer state, which has restricted natural gas development, leaned hard into renewables, or joined an ambitious emission reduction program. When Virginia pulls in more expensive power from its neighbors, or when Maryland absorbs double-digit rate hikes, that isn't a governance failure - it's the market doing its job by revealing the cost of divergent state policy preferences (and thus resource access).

These state policy preferences are then lobbed at the market and its participants to respond to, whether by prematurely retiring generation, relying on tax subsidies, or simply building generation that is more expensive per megawatt when compared against traditional baseload fuels.

PJM is actively working to continue the evolution of the market to meet the demand of today and the future. It has cleared more than 60% of its interconnection backlog under a reformed study process and opened a new study cycle this spring in partnership with Google to apply AI to speed up the review process. A separate PJM program, the Reliability Resource Initiative, pulled in more than 11,000 MW of new projects that could come online quickly. PJM has also adjusted its review processes to allow more wind, solar, and storage to compete directly in the capacity auction. It's even accepted a price collar through 2030, demonstrating that it is willing to make short-term adjustments in response to concerns by state executives.

More than 46,000 MW of approved projects - over a quarter of PJM's existing capacity - already hold the right to build but are unable to move forward. Some 37,000 MW of PJM-approved generation can't even break ground at all because of state and local permitting fights. At the same time, state policy mandates have pushed working plants into early retirement, further tightening supply from the other end. The same governors demanding faster action are often the ones holding the permits and slow-walking the buildout of energy infrastructure while forcing closures of dispatchable power.

PJM is not too big. It has demonstrated time and again that it can run a competitive power market and ensure the reliable transportation of power across 13 very varied states and the District of Columbia. It's been successfully doing this for more than 30 years, delivering $5 billion in savings annually to customers, just as it was designed to do. It's accelerated the queue and kept the lights on. What the market cannot do is permit projects or draft legislation. States must recognize their role in restricting the full benefits of the market.

Asking PJM to continue navigating these policy issues in the same manner - trying to respond to all of them - is a recipe for disaster. The states are absolutely responsible for chucking icebergs into the path of this ship, and if it goes down, they'll have themselves to blame for the aftermath.

Todd Snitchler is President and CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA).

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 18:40

Pro-Palestine Activist Reportedly Murdered By Migrant Boyfriend

The phrase "suicidal empathy" has exploded like wildfire across social media in the past year largely because there are so many tragic stories of migrant crime against people who advocate for open immigration.  Liberal women and devout leftist activists work in immigration centers or open their homes to third world migrants, only to be brutally assaulted or murdered by those same people.

It's important to understand that the third world views the west not as a new home or an opportunity for integration, they view the west as a target for conquest.  By extension, they see western citizens as people to be subdued; as fat cattle to be culled.  Coexistence is simply impossible, but woke activists consistently risk their own lives and the lives of others in a foolish attempt prove the opposite.

Case in point:  Prominent Irish Pro-Palestine activist Jamey Carney was found dead by her 13-year-old daughter in their rented home in Killarney, Ireland on July 7th, 2026 - Her skull was violently bludgeoned, though the official cause of death is listed as "suffocation". 

The one and only suspect? Ahmad Al-Saqar, a Jordanian migrant who Carney met at a Pro-Palestine rally.  She invited the man to stay at her home on occasion, though his primary residence was the government run asylum center (migrant hotel) in Killarney.  Neighbors report a loud argument between Al-Saqar and Carney just before she was found dead. 

The couple were in a romantic relationship and Al-Saqar often referred to Carney as his "bride" and his "princess" on social media.      

The migrant is now on the run and is believed to have fled the UK for Turkey immediately after the murder.  The chances of apprehension and punishment are slim.  UK authorities are more likely to sweep migrant crimes under the rug than they are to pursue international suspects.  Al-Saqar is believed to be Muslim (95% of Jordanians are Muslim), though official reports do not mention his religious background.

Jamey Carney was previously a US citizen, living in New York and working in real estate and insurance.  Her reasons for moving to Ireland and diving into the activist movement in 2021 are not clear.  However, relocation to Europe has been a growing trend among American liberals since 2016.  

The irony of a woke activist being murdered by a migrant from Jordan is not surprising. The cultural divide in how women are treated in Islamic society vs western society is vast and violence against women is common.  A number of progressive activists have been attacked by migrants across the US and Europe while engaging in advocacy programs.  Yet, progressives continue to deny that third world immigration is dangerous. 

Brenda Blainey, An 87-year-old woman in Thornton-le-Dale, North Yorkshire, befriended and invited Shahin Darvish-Narenjbon (a failed Iranian asylum seeker she met in a restaurant years earlier) to live with her. She treated him like a grandson, but he murdered her in her home in a vicious attack in 2023. He was later convicted of manslaughter (diminished responsibility). 

Jean Dussine, a well-known 63-year-old French activist who headed a local migrant assistance organization and frequently hosted migrants in his personal home was bludgeoned to death in his sleep in May 2020. Police arrested a 21-year-old Afghan migrant who had confessed to the attack.  

Numerous assaults, sexual assaults and murders have been reported across the UK and Europe in relation to migrant hotels.  In many cases, these attacks target the very people working or volunteering at the hotels.  However, most countries in Europe purposely avoid tracking the immigration status of suspects to prevent public backlash against multicultural projects.  

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 18:05

Fifth Circuit Rules Against In-State Tuition For Illegal Aliens

Authored by Catherine Salgado via PJMedia.com,

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of the Trump administration and against woke states or universities that try to provide special tuition breaks to illegal aliens.

Brett Shumate, who serves as the assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Division, celebrated the court win on Thursday, July 9. This is a victory not only for the Trump administration, which is trying to enforce laws at the state level against law-breaking foreigners, but also for American taxpayers, who perforce contribute to public universities that then give special deals to illegal aliens. Meanwhile, many Americans can’t afford to attend college.

It is important to note that the ruling specifically states that universities cannot provide in-state tuition to aliens when it does not provide such benefits to American nationals regardless of residency. It therefore undercuts the tuition break for foreigners on the explicit argument of it being unfair to citizens not residing in the state in question.

The case concerned whether Texas universities could provide in-state tuition to illegal aliens in defiance of federal law while denying lower tuition to non-Texas students. The state’s governor, Greg Abbott, is very pleased with the new circuit court ruling. “Texas and the Trump DOJ just secured another major victory for the rule of law,” he declared. “The Fifth Circuit upheld the END of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants in Texas.”

Judicial Hub reported that the judges appointed by Ronald Reagan (Judge Jerry Smith) and Donald Trump (Judge Don Willett) issued the majority ruling while the Joe Biden-appointed Judge Irma Ramirez dissented. The ruling stated, as mentioned above, “Section 1623(a) preempts what we call the Challenged Provisions vis-à-vis illegal aliens, barring states from conferring postsecondary education benefits on any illegal alien based on residence unless the same benefit is available to all U.S. citizens and nationals irrespective of residency.”

As of October 2025, 22 states were reportedly offering in-state tuition to illegal aliens. That represents almost half of the United States. Hopefully the federal government can now enforce the restrictions given the Fifth Circuit Court ruling, presuming Democrats do not make the move they so often make of simply ignoring court decisions they dislike.

To give just one example of how unfair many universities and states can be, the University of Arizona provides advice to “DACA/Dreamer Applicants” (i.e., illegal aliens) on how to obtain in-state tuition prices and merit scholarships. The University of Arizona also slashed the amount of merit scholarships it was giving to American citizen students for the incoming fall 2026 freshman class. Maybe if the university would stop wasting money on foreigners who are not legally allowed to be present in the state, it would have more money for American students.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 17:30

The COVID Reckoning That Never Came

Authored by Ed Dowd via 'Beyond The Narrative' substack,

The COVID Reckoning That Never Came... And the Silence That Proves the Psyop

Over the last several years I have been posting nonstop on X about the same nightmares we’ve been living through…the COVID psyop, the experimental mRNA shots, the mandates that destroyed lives, the injuries, the excess deaths, and the relentless propaganda machine that tried to silence anyone who noticed the bodies piling up. I have watched it all in real time: the fear porn, the goalpost moving, the “safe and effective” lies repeated like gospel while real-world data told a different story.

Now we have fresh, documented revelations that should have blown the lid off of everything. Instead? Crickets from the media and, more disappointingly, from the current administration that promised accountability.

Senator Ron Johnson dropped another devastating report and hearing in late April 2026: “Unmasked: How Biden Health Officials Purposely Turned a Blind Eye Toward COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Signals.” Internal records show FDA officials knew their VAERS monitoring was inadequate to say least. They had better data-mining tools ready to flag clear safety signals: cardiac deaths, strokes, pulmonary issues, Bell’s palsy but they chose not to use them. Why? To avoid “vaccine hesitancy.”

This was not screw-up territory. It was deliberate. Vaccine-injured people sat across from Peter Marks and other top FDA brass begging for acknowledgment. They got stonewalled. Johnson rightly calls this one of the biggest scandals in his decades in public service. Then in early June he held another hearing exposing potential cancer links to the mRNA shots and the systematic suppression of critical studies. Same playbook: inconvenient science gets buried or attacked.

Around the same time, Tulsi Gabbard, in one of her final moves as DNI, declassified documents laying out Fauci’s role in funding gain-of-function research at Wuhan, the lab-leak cover-up, the intelligence manipulation, and the retaliation against truth-tellers. Millions of taxpayer dollars funneled into risky biolabs, followed by the full narrative-control machine kicking in to blame nature instead of the obvious.

These are not anonymous X threads. This is a sitting Senator with subpoena power and the former Director of National Intelligence dropping official records.

So where is the firestorm? Where are the front-page exposés, the prime-time specials, the demands for real hearings and prosecutions? In 1976 the swine flu vaccine was pulled after 25 deaths and 500 cases of Guillain Barre Syndrome. In the covid shot era we have approximately 39,000 deaths reported to VAERS following the shot. Apparently lives got cheaper over the last 50 years. The legacy media has mostly ignored it, downplayed it, or run the usual “right-wing conspiracy” dismissals. Paid to lie… and crickets on recent FDA COVID vax revelations. Their complicity is not an understatement, rather it was essential to the entire psyop.

Even more frustrating is the relative silence from the current Trump administration. After years of vowing to expose the lies and drain the swamp on the pandemic response, these revelations land and… not much follow-through. No aggressive push for accountability. No sustained public reckoning for the officials who covered up safety signals or manipulated the origins story. That silence hits hard. Additionally the vaccines are still on the market and this administration is now complicit. What an epic failure!

A lot of us did not need Johnson’s reports or Gabbard’s declassifications to see the fraud. Back in 2022 and 2023, my team at Phinance Technologies was already digging into the data and uncovering the real narrative through our Humanity Projects. We analyzed excess deaths, disability surges, absence rates, and the human and economic costs of mass inoculations when almost no one else wanted to touch it. Check out the full body of work here: Humanity Projects

What we found through cold, hard numbers lined up with what the bodies on the ground were showing. We weren’t surprised by the latest revelations from Senator Johnson. We had been sounding the alarm years earlier, while getting labeled conspiracy theorists for it.

We watched the institutionally well-established benefits of natural immunity get summarily dismissed and memory holed. We saw “two weeks to flatten the curve” turn into endless boosters for the compliant and job losses for the unvaccinated. We saw friends and family injured or worse, then told it was “rare,” “coincidence,” or “misinformation.” Those of us who protested the mandates and the experimental mRNA shots were labeled Russian disinformation, dangerous spreaders, even domestic terrorists. It did not stick, but they tried.

For those who saw through the propaganda early, resisted it, and watched peers fall for it our worldview has forever changed. The greatest cover-up ever. But despite the MSM blackout, word has gotten out through underground channels, thanks in no small part to Senator Ron Johnson and others who refused to let subject die.

The betrayal runs deep. These new revelations do not surprise us but rather they confirm what the data and our own eyes showed years ago. They lied. They knew they were lying. They censored, gaslit, and destroyed lives to protect the narrative. Many institutions including public health, intelligence, media, Big Pharma were all in on it and still propagating the lies today.

That loss of trust is profound and permanent for millions of us. We no longer default to believing official statements. We demand primary data. We assume self-preservation and narrative control from authorities until proven otherwise. The COVID era did not just damage credibility on one issue instead it shattered how an entire group of people view government, “experts,” and authority. “Doing your own research” proved to be a critical lifesaver.

The people in authority still defending the garbage jab or pretending none of this matters can keep taking their 12 boosters (dirty little secret… they are not). The rest of us are done. We are profoundly changed. More skeptical. More data driven. Less willing to comply. Team Humanity was born out of this mess.

The window for real accountability is slamming shut. Even if these official revelations get memory-holed, the lesson is clear: they never planned to come clean. They want us to forget and move on to the next crisis.

I am not forgetting. And from what I see every day, millions are not either. As time rolls forward and the cognitive dissonance of those who took the vaccine wears off…our numbers will continue to grow.

“For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” — Luke 8:17

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 16:20

Rubio Convenes 60-Nation Summit To Confront Transnational Far-Left Terrorism

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has requested that senior officials from more than 60 countries convene in Washington next Thursday to discuss the alarming rise of transnational far-left terrorism, according to a Washington Post report.

The State Department confirmed the meeting in a post on X Friday afternoon titled, "Secretary of State Marco Rubio Is Setting His Sights on Antifa."

.@NEWSMAX: "Secretary of State Marco Rubio is setting his sights on Antifa." pic.twitter.com/dHZvcpFrHf

— Department of State (@StateDept) July 10, 2026

The initiative is intended to expand intelligence sharing, law-enforcement cooperation and potential terrorist designations targeting militant groups with alleged ties to Antifa.

Administration officials have discussed whether foreign-terrorism links could unlock broader investigative and surveillance powers against US-based far-left revolutionaries that are a part of subversion networks.

The problem is that countries have been addressing far-left revolutionaries as a domestic threat, but in fact it's transnational.

Due to overwhelming interest, we’re expanding the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism to additional countries who are working to combat the growing international threat of far-left violence. https://t.co/3LxNkhGY64

— Department of State (@StateDept) July 11, 2026

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the upcoming event is in response to the rise of the radical left. He said far-left terrorism is "an old threat re-emerging with strong transnational links and new convergences."

🚨 Rioters in L.A. are burning self-driving Waymo cars, each worth $600K. Police are asking the company to shut down the app as people lure cars into protest zones and set them on fire.#LosAngelesProtests #california pic.twitter.com/dp9jEqXaSp

— Tom Valentino (@TomValentinoo) June 9, 2025

"Because this threat has not been adequately addressed in the past, each engagement, designation, or security assistance program creates a compounding effect supporting countermeasures at home and abroad," Pigott said in a statement.

In November, the State Department designated four European far-left groups as foreign terrorist organizations and directed agencies to investigate networks accused of fomenting political violence. One of the militant groups in Germany is called Antifa Ost. Two more were in Greece and one in Italy.

Related:

• Germany's AfD Tricks Thousands Of Antifa Revolutionaries

During the Antifa roundtable at the White House last October, Seamus Bruner, Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute, briefed the president and his cabinet on a complex network of dark-money NGOs and activist groups fueling unrest nationwide via the permanent protest-industrial complex.

"We have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized Antifa organizations, but dozens of radical organizations that have received more than $100 million from the Riot Inc investors," Bruner told Trump.

via Government Accountability Institute... 

Elon Musk chimed in on X, commenting on a video featuring Bruner's public briefing to the president about the dark-money NGOs, saying, "Way more than $100M of US taxpayer money.

Way more than $100M of US taxpayer money

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 8, 2025

Investigators have honed in on what appears to be foreign subversion networks operating in the US - one from Cuba and the other from China.

Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sanctioned the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, or ICAP, a Castro-era organization used to spread Marxist ideology abroad.

As we've pointed out before (see the report), ICAP sits at the center, functioning as a partner to NNOC. Think of NNOC as a pathway for foreign subversion operations to infiltrate US NGOs.

Take a look at NNOC's member organizations, and you might notice several socialist and communist-linked NGOs, including the Democratic Socialists of America, whose members have actively promoted "destroying America from within."

Frank, Aaron, Hank and Sam are Communist insurgents, radicalized marxist revolutionaries hiding behind personal ideologies to justfy their 1A expressions of the right to promote the insurrection of the Constitutional Republic of the United States of America pic.twitter.com/XLzzjisOqd

— AnimalFarm1945 (Moshe) (@Farm1945A) July 6, 2026

DSA has stated they're ICAP partners...

Just days ago, independent Cuban news outlet ADN Cuba revealed that a US-based Cuba solidarity coalition was giving orders to their far-left revolutionaries embedded within the US to prepare rapid-response protests at US federal buildings, military bases, recruitment centers, and ICE facilities in the event of a military confrontation between the US military and the communist regime in Havana. As we've seen before, these protests tend to turn into riots, especially at ICE facilities.

Read leaked memo here.

🚨 PRIMERO EN ADN | Documentos revisados por ADN Cuba revelan un plan nacional de “respuesta rápida” distribuido por la Red Nacional sobre Cuba (NNOC), una coalición con vínculos documentados con el ICAP, para coordinar protestas contra oficinas de ICE, bases militares y…

— ADNCuba - Noticias de Cuba (@CubaAdn) July 8, 2026

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York, authorized by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is examining whether far-left China-based tech financier Neville Roy Singham, who has reportedly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into left-wing nonprofits, media operations, and activist networks that seek to sow chaos and spread communism inside the US, has committed wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, or other financial crimes.

FIRST ON FOX: A federal grand jury is investigating China-based tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham over alleged financial improprieties involving $278 million that investigators say moved through his financial network over the past decade.

Federal investigators are examining… pic.twitter.com/cqqt9QthU6

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 29, 2026

It gets better because even top officials in the Democratic Party are calling for investigations into far-left revolutionary groups, including a Bill Clinton insider:

• Bill Clinton Insider Warns Of Socialist Takeover, Calls For Probe Into Possible DSA Foreign Ties

And we wonder why:

Hasan Piker calls on his followers to kill capitalists:

“Yeah kill them! KiII those motherfuckers and murder those motherfuckers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood, dude.”

Democrats are campaigning with him. pic.twitter.com/YiZxGgRkgc

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) April 9, 2026

Jordan Garces of Rhode Island DSA: “We’re here to overthrow the entire capitalist state.” pic.twitter.com/MSaBllyXnr

— DSA Watch (@DSA_Watch) July 9, 2026

REMINDER: The DSA = ANTIFA pic.twitter.com/CD4chd6jzz

— 🇺🇸 Jason Curtis Anderson (@JCAndersonNYC) September 20, 2025

Simultaneously, there has been a disturbing pattern arising across the West:

• Troubling Pattern Of Left-Wing Revolutionaries Targeting "Capitalists" Raises Alarm Over Youth Radicalization

Whether it is Antifa, other far-left revolutionary movements, foreign subversion networks tied to intelligence operations from Cuba to China, or DSA figures openly calling for the destruction of the US, the common ideological thread is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Even establishment globalist outlets such as The Atlantic have recently acknowledged the broader pattern:

More or less, the rise of the far-left revolutionary movement is driven by a shared objective: dismantling America from within and killing capitalism. The resurgence of these revolutionaries is creating a growing national-security and political problem.

President Trump's recent barrage of Truth Social posts attacking communism suggests the administration may be preparing to dramatically escalate its campaign against these revolutionary networks and what only appears to be foreign subversion networks that support them.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 15:45

5 Charts To Navigate This Chaotic Market

Authored by Adam Sharp via DailyReckoning.com,

I have 5 charts for you today which put this crazy market into context and give some clarity on what might come next.

We’re at a fascinating crossroads for markets, geopolitics, and finance.

Let’s get started.

Semis Party Like It’s 1999

First up, semiconductor returns. The index below includes U.S. semi stocks like Nvidia, Micron, Intel, Broadcom, Marvell, Texas Instruments, and more:

Source: Charlie Bilello 

As you can see, during the dotcom bubble, semiconductor stocks soared 234% over 14 months in the period leading up to February 2000. That was the peak of the market, and tech stocks wouldn’t recover for about 15 years.

And in the past 14 months, SOX is up 237%. Reminiscent of the dotcom days.

Maybe this time is different, and yes, the stocks are more profitable today. But it’s undeniable that markets are getting bubbly. Semis are looking especially frothy. When AI spending inevitably slows down, watch out below…

+$2.99 Trillion

Over the past year, America’s federal debt jumped by $2.99 trillion.

Needless to say, our current trajectory is unsustainable. We’re paying about $1.2 trillion per year just in interest on federal government debt.

This is the key reason I believe interest rates will need to go down to near zero sometime in the next few years. Even if inflation remains above target. And it’s why I still believe holding precious metal investments is key to wealth preservation and growth.

AI Infrastructure Surpasses Humans

We all know data centers are booming. But the chart below puts it all into perspective. It compares office construction (blue) to data centers (red):

Source: Zerohedge

Simply remarkable. We’re spending more on infrastructure for AI than humans.

And since 2016, spending on data centers is up more than 10x.

But all around the country, locals are pushing back against big tech. Data centers are extremely loud. They spike local electricity prices to unaffordable levels. In some cases, they pollute the water with nitrites and other chemicals.

And most importantly, our power grid is hitting its limits. We can’t build new power plants fast enough to keep up. So eventually, the data center boom will have to slow down significantly. And that will likely mark the top of this boom/bubble.

Silver vs Stocks

Silver has had a rough few months. After rising almost 4x in a year, it has been cut in half.

The chart below compares silver to the S&P 500. As this chart rises, silver is beating stocks. When it falls, it is losing.

Source: Tavi Costa

As you can see, even at the recent highs we didn’t get anywhere near the levels we saw in 2011, when silver outperformed stocks for an extended period.

We’ve gotten our big correction, and I believe the next 5 years will be excellent for silver. It still has a long way to go to reach 2011 levels (compared to stocks). And supply deficits today are far more extreme than they ever were back then. Solar is booming and investment demand is soaring, especially in Asia.

I remain convinced silver will find new highs over the next few years. Maybe sooner.

-$246B Gambling Losses

The USA’s gambling problem is getting worse. As a whole, Americans are on track to lose $246 billion this year.

Source: Joey Politano

As we highlighted last week, Americans invest about $600 billion in 401ks every year. That number could be $850 billion if we ever learn that gambling has horrible odds.

Look, if you can afford to gamble and enjoy it, great. But many people are trying to strike it rich. And that almost never happens.

Gambling is all around us, and we should be on guard against its pernicious effects. Saving and investing should always come first.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 15:10

China Lands Reusable Rocket On Barge, But SpaceX Remains Years Ahead

China successfully landed the first-stage booster of a Long March 10B rocket on a floating barge during an orbital launch test earlier Friday, marking the first major step in reusable launch technology, albeit roughly a decade behind Elon Musk's SpaceX.

"This mission … signifies a historic breakthrough in China's reusable rocket technology and a solid foundation for accelerating the improvement of China's space access capabilities," the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation wrote in a social media post.

China has achieved its first-ever controlled recovery of a rocket booster, a breakthrough for the country's reusable space tech. On the maiden flight of Long March-10B, the rocket successfully placed its payload into orbit, and its first stage returned and was captured by a net… pic.twitter.com/YZRcgbneTg

— China Xinhua Sci-Tech (@XHscitech) July 10, 2026

Reusable rockets are key to SpaceX's dominance of the global launch market, with Musk's company having mastered booster recovery and reuse a decade ago:

• December 21, 2015: First successful landing of an orbital-class Falcon 9 booster.
• April 8, 2016: First successful landing on an ocean drone ship.
• March 30, 2017: First relaunch of a previously flown Falcon 9 booster, marking the start of operational reuse.

Ten Years Ago: SpaceX Falcon 9 First Stage Landing  

Blue Origin, SpaceX's closest U.S. rival, completed the first successful landing of a New Glenn first-stage booster last November.

pic.twitter.com/0WzaWjjjL9

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 19, 2026

BryceTech's latest launch report for Q1 2026 shows how SpaceX's reusable-rocket technology has transformed Musk's space and AI company into a market leader.

SpaceX launched 40 rockets during the quarter, compared with 12 for China, five for Rocket Lab, and four for Russia, reinforcing the widening gap between SpaceX and the rest of the global launch industry.

More evidence of SpaceX's dominance:

And again:

SpaceX is a major reason America's space program continues to lead the world today and should maintain that lead through 2030.

Investors are waiting for the commercialization of Starship...

84% chance Starship is fully reusable before 2028. https://t.co/PZiahSxMgo

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) July 7, 2026

With SpaceX maintaining roughly a decade-long technological lead over nation-state-backed programs such as China's, it is little surprise that Wall Street analysts are piling in with bullish ratings on SPCX. Raymond James is the most aggressive, setting a Street-high 12-month price target of $800. Read the report here.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 14:35

China Bans Helium Exports As Qatar Outage Deepens Global Supply Squeeze

China has abruptly banned helium exports, a key component in semiconductors, which adds yet another serious constraint to a global market already reeling from the loss of production in Qatar.

In a two-sentence Friday announcement, China's Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs said helium covered by customs code 2804290010 was subject to a temporary prohibition on exports, effective immediately. The agencies cited China's Foreign Trade Law but provided no explanation, expiration date, transition period or exemptions. Any future adjustments, they said, would be announced separately. See the official Chinese government announcement.

The decision is more restrictive than an export-licensing requirement. It appears to prevent covered shipments to all foreign destinations, regardless of buyer or intended use. The announcement does not explain how customs officials will treat previously signed contracts, cargo awaiting departure or helium originally imported into China and subsequently repackaged for re-export.

Nor does it carve out exceptions for hospitals, scientific laboratories, semiconductor manufacturers or humanitarian users.

The physical volume removed from the international market may be relatively small. China accounted for an average of 5 percent of U.S. helium imports between 2021 and 2024, compared with 47 percent from Canada, 28 percent from Qatar and 10 percent from Algeria, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's 2026 helium commodity summary - but the significance of the move lies in its timing.

China produces only a fraction of the helium it consumes and imports roughly 85 percent or more of its requirements, according to reporting by Reuters, with the Associated Press places China's domestic production at no more than ~ 15 percent of its needs. This suggests the ban is principally an effort to conserve helium for domestic industry rather than a measure capable, by itself, of depriving foreign buyers of large quantities. It also implies that Beijing expects the present shortage to persist.

Chinese companies have increasingly acted as intermediaries - importing some Russian helium and re-exporting volumes to overseas markets, including Europe. The ban could therefore remove more internationally traded material than China's domestic production figures alone would suggest.

Qatar Shock Ripples Through A Concentrated Market

The global helium market was already under severe pressure before China's announcement. Helium is generally recovered as a byproduct of natural-gas processing. When a large gas complex stops operating, helium production cannot simply continue independently. That vulnerability became evident after attacks forced QatarEnergy to stop production of liquefied natural gas and associated products at its Ras Laffan complex - causing them to subsequently declared force-majeure on affected contracts. 

Further missile attacks damaged LNG Trains 4 and 6. QatarEnergy said the damaged facilities could take between three and five years to repair and estimated that the attacks had removed 17 percent of Qatar's LNG export capacity. See the company's statement on the damage and repair timetable.

Qatar produced an estimated 63 million cubic meters of helium in 2025, close to one-third of estimated world production, according to the USGS. A disruption there is therefore a worldwide rather than regional problem.

Helium prices reacted quickly. Spot prices doubled after the Middle East conflict began, according to industry participants interviewed by Reuters. Some market specialists warned that an extended disruption could push prices toward levels last seen during previous severe shortages.

The problem is compounded by the peculiar logistics of the helium trade. Liquid helium must remain at extraordinarily low temperatures and gradually evaporates during transportation. One industry executive told Reuters that suppliers effectively have about 45 days to move liquefied helium to the end user.

Unlike oil, helium lacks a large and transparent spot market. Most volumes are sold under private, long-term contracts, making real-time prices difficult to observe. Supply stress often emerges through customer allocations, surcharges and force-majeure notices rather than through a widely quoted futures contract.

China's exposure to Qatar is not accidental. In February 2025, QatarEnergy signed a 20-year agreement to deliver 100 million cubic feet of high-purity helium annually to China. It was the first direct, long-term helium supply agreement between Qatar and a Chinese buyer. 

The new ban therefore raises an important question: Is China merely stopping helium produced domestically, or is it also preventing imported Qatari, Russian and other foreign-origin helium from being resold abroad? 

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 13:44

Without Subsidies, Is AI Unaffordable?

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Let's pull all this into an undeniable conclusion: AI is based on massively subsidizing users' costs.

What's already abundantly clear but verboten to say as it would pop the bubble of AI valuations and triumphalism is that AI is unaffordable once the direct and indirect subsidies are withdrawn. Nothing that consumes this much electricity and requires such an immense scale of costly processing and memory capacity can be low-cost, never mind free.

The major AI platforms and vendors are subsidizing corporate and individual users in the hopes that they can achieve AI sector dominance --and the pricing power that comes with it--via the network effect, the dominance generated by having the majority of users bound by habit or dependence to your platform or tools.

This battle for network effect dominance is playing out in full view:

AI Giants Are Handing Out Tons of Free Computing Power to Grab Startup Share: (wsj.com) Pitched battle for business users comes as AI companies seek lasting streams of revenue.

Hans Ibarra, a founder building an AI-voice startup, has found himself on the receiving end of a big opportunity: Top artificial-intelligence companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and others desperate to win his business are ramping up discounts.

Across Silicon Valley, startup founders like Ibarra are enjoying a wave of computing credits and fielding competing offers from AI-model makers racing to land new enterprise customers. Cursor, the AI-coding company bought by Elon Musk's SpaceX, offered a 75% discount through July 5.

"If I'm choosing between a really cheap Chinese model that I actually have to pay for, and a very expensive Anthropic model that I don't have to pay for, I'm going to pick the Anthropic model," Acker said. "I'm always going to pick the one for which I have free credits."

Meanwhile, back in the real world of costs, AI Costs More Than The People It Replaced (forbes.com)(via Tom D.)

It turns out that experienced human workers doing the work right in the first place is cheaper than having AI run a probability distribution process that needs vetting and corrections. And remember, AI isn't actually "intelligent," it's just a probability distribution using natural language.

As management guru Peter Drucker observed, enterprises don't have profits, they have costs. Purveyors of AI platforms and tools have costs, and so do their customers. Those costs are currently being funded by investors, who are in effect subsidizing the AI companies' "free" giveaways of horrendously costly "tokens" in a manic, desperate attempt to grab the brass ring of network effect dominance before their cash runs out.

This raises a question: Is this any way to run a railroad? In other words, is this actually a viable business model, burning billions of dollars in cash to lock in network effect dominance in a field that is rapidly obsoleting every iteration of an innately limited mode of computation? Is claiming that a probability distribution is "intelligent" in the same way humans are intelligent a viable business model when there is ample evidence this simply isn't true?

AI and human intelligence are drastically different--here's how (scientificamerican.com)

What happens when enterprises have to pay the unsubsidized costs of AI is they immediately curtail their AI spending because the customer-facing / financial benefits of AI are at best elusive and often negative. Peter Drucker was onto something that is currently being lost in the PR-propaganda push of those trying to cash in on the AI euphoria: enterprises don't have profits, they have costs, and the real-world costs of AI are extraordinarily high while the payoffs are ambiguous.

There are many other hidden subsidies within the AI machinery. There are corporate tax write-off subsidies, energy subsidies, tax credit subsidies for building data centers, and so on. If these were stripped out, what would the real unsubsidized costs of AI be? No one knows, but they would be higher than what's presented as the cost now.

Then there's the if it's legal, it's moral, and what's legal is for sale subsidy: AI is built on the systemic theft of copyrighted content. Last month alone, AI scrapers gorged on 246,000 pages from my Of Two Minds server, and hundreds of thousands of pages of my copyrighted works on my mirror site and other sites posting my work.

This is legal, but is it moral? Nobody asks such questions because the important thing is to avoid saddling AI users with the real costs. So if all those content creators get nothing--in effect, subsidizing both AI companies and the users of their AI platforms and tools--well, so what, because if it's legal, it's moral, and what's legal is for sale.

Well that's just peachy, but let's do a thought experiment where every creator of copyrighted work got paid for supplying AI with its database, and every user of AI had to pay us content creators. How about a penny a page / image / sound clip? so 246,000 pages per month (again, only a fraction of the total volume of my work that was scraped by AI companies for their "free" use in a single month) would be $2,460 a month paid to me by AI users benefiting directly from my copyrighted work. Wouldn't that be fair, i.e. moral?

Recall that US copyright law is explicit: all creative content is copyrighted upon completion, period.

How many current users of AI are willing to pay the full unsubsidized costs for their use of AI? We can safely say far fewer than are using the tools for "free" due to subsidies both direct and indirect.

Let's pull all this into an undeniable conclusion: AI is based on massively subsidizing users' costs. Once those subsidies end, what's left are costs, not profits. Play that any way you like, but massive subsidies are not sustainable, though they generate a temporary illusion of viability that can be exploited by those selling a fantasy of future profitability to credulous investors and enterprises.

Left unsaid is a lot of money is being gambled on the illusion that subsidies are sustainable. They're not. Enterprises don't have profits, they have costs.

*  *  *

My book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free). Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Subscribe to my Substack for free

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 12:50

Maine Dems Will Pick Platner Replacement At Rushed Convention This Month

After their nominee for the 2026 Maine Senate race dropped out on Friday in the wake of sex assault allegations, Democrats will pick his successor at a convention on July 25th, the state party chair announced Friday afternoon. That's just two days before the deadline for making the change and securing a new nominees' place on the general election ballot. It's a tall order for one of the smallest state party organizations in the country, and Democrats haunted by the rushed 2024 insertion of deeply-flawed candidate Kamala Harris into Joe Biden's nominee slot are uneasy -- all the more so given how tight the race for Senate control could be.    

The crisis springs from previous nominee Graham Platner's withdrawal from the contest on Friday. He won the June 9th primary, but was done in by a Politico report in which a former girlfriend claimed a drunk Platner spontaneously showed up at her house and sexually assaulted her. Democrats who were already uneasy about Platner's profile -- which includes a history of philanderous sexts sent to multiple women, old Reddit posts self-identifying as a "communist," other posts calling cops "bastards," and a Nazi tattoo (though not a particularly obvious one). Setting aside the new rape allegation, all those black marks on his resume were public information before the primary election. 

“The voters of Maine, the Democratic primary voters of Maine, owe the rest of Mainers an apology.”

A thing that was actually said on CNN: pic.twitter.com/A8HOqYfWN7

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 10, 2026

The new Democratic nominee will take on five-term Republican Susan Collins, a shaky-voiced 73-year-old who's considered the GOP's most vulnerable incumbent. The Cook Political Report says the state's Senate race is one of four toss-ups this fall, along with the contests in Ohio, Michigan and Alaska. To wrest control of the Senate from the GOP, Democrats must flip four seats. 

 "The convention will be fair, representative and as transparent as possible," said Maine Democratic Party Chairman Charlie Dingman in a video statement. "In coordination with our legal counsel, we have put together a plan for this nominating convention that will allow us to choose a qualified candidate who has the energy, ideas and popular support to defeat Susan Collins." On its site, the party implied that a snap primary election was out of the question due to the tight time constraints. The Democratic State Committee "overwhelmingly" voted for the convention process after a long emergency meeting on Wednesday, according to PunchBowl's Ally Mutnick. 

Democrats searching for Platner’s replacement… pic.twitter.com/XqfKUyIrPe

— David Santa Carla 🦇 (@TheOnlyDSC) July 9, 2026

Held on the last Saturday of this month, the convention will comprise a whopping 601 delegates, 101 of whom will be members of the Democratic State Committee -- who are elected by voters -- and 500 delegates appointed by Maine's 16 counties. The proceedings will take place at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. "Voting will be conducted in rounds until one candidate reaches a majority," the party explained in an FAQ. "The five candidates receiving the highest number of votes in the first round will advance to the second round. Each subsequent round will eliminate the lowest vote-getter until one candidate is chosen." 

It appears there will be no party-organized debates or town halls before the convention. "The nominating convention will provide an opportunity for candidates to address delegates directly," said the party. "Candidates are encouraged to campaign in any way they see fit." 

A brokered convention, in late July in Maine, with control of the Senate potentially on the line — what more could the political press corps possibly ask for? pic.twitter.com/nwQa5nIbrS

— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) July 10, 2026

Democratic politicians who lost bids for other offices are pouring out the woodwork to take their shot at winning the nomination in a half-month sprint to the July 25th convention, including former public health official Nirav Shah, former Maine Senate president and logger Troy Jackson, and Maine secretary of state Shenna Bellows. All three of them sought the 2026 nomination for governor. Other hopefuls include former congressional staffer (for Katie Porter) Jordan Wood and social worker Paige Loud -- who both lost in the same congressional primary this year -- and Maine Beer Company co-founder Dan Kleban, who took an initial stab at the Senate nomination last year. 

If nothing else, this could make for some great political theater. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 12:15

Key Revelations From 4th Batch Of Pentagon UFO Files

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

The Pentagon released its fourth new batch of UFO files on July 10, including a transcript from a conference that included scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project.

This release of information on UFOs, which the government refers to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), has a total of 40 files, including 19 videos, 14 documents, four audio clips, and three images.

The mix of partially unredacted files and historical documents is sourced from multiple agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, NASA, and the Department of Energy.

The Pentagon said it is not the last release of UFO files in relation to President Donald Trump’s executive order, according to a statement from chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.

High-Speed ‘Rectangle’

In one report, five U.S. military-affiliated personnel witnessed a strange object over the eastern United States in 2019.

“I noticed an object with flight characteristics unlike anything I had seen in my 28 years of performing [REDACTED] for the [Army] and Navy. A small object was below us and appeared to be traveling in a straight line opposite our direction at high speed,” the observer wrote.

“I tracked it for ~10-15 seconds before we turned on the recorder to provide the attached video. When I zoomed in to try and achieve more resolution, the object’s speed took [it] out of my [field of view] and I was unable to reacquire, even at a lower zoom.”

The military service member said the object “appeared to be rectangular,” and said others “with equal or more experience” were also unable to identify it.

In the 20-second video, the object is tracking quickly to the left of the screen before it zooms out of view.

The report came from a “range fouler debrief,” which is a “standardized reporting form the U.S. Navy uses to record the circumstances surrounding an unauthorized intrusion into controlled airspace during active military operations or training,” according to the Pentagon.

Balloon Over the Atlantic?

Another range fouler debrief described a sighting over the Atlantic in 2020 of what an observer suggested could have been an unidentified balloon.

The heavily redacted report stated that the object “traveled with the wind, the closer we came to it,” and that it was difficult to ascertain which direction it was heading, but it was “generally” moving south without any “maneuvers or change in direction.”

“The object itself was a darker, maroonish color, approximately 12-15ft in height. Structurally, it appeared as a large, somewhat deformed balloon, but we were unable to verify that as we passed at the merge,” the observer wrote.

The strange object slowly comes into focus in the 32-second video, which was captured by a U.S. military infrared sensor, before the footage abruptly cuts off.

Manhattan Project Scientists  

One of the historical documents included in the Pentagon’s fourth batch of UFO files is a transcript of a conference at the-then Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1949.

Now known as the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the facility was hosting leading scientists and physicists at the time, including many who had worked on the Manhattan Project.

After unknown “green fireballs” had been observed for several months near the laboratory, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission convened the conference to determine their origin and explain the phenomenon.

The panel failed to reach a consensus to explain the “green fireballs,” with one hypothesis suggesting they could be meteors entering the atmosphere at a “shallow” angle and altitude.

Lincoln LaPaz, an expert specializing in meteorics at the time and one of the key witnesses, said “95 percent of the observations indicate a very nearly horizontal path” of the objects, which he estimated were moving “between 3 miles per second and 12 miles per second.”

That would equal roughly 10,800 to 43,200 miles per hour, within the range of speed for a meteor.

However, after running calculations based on the objects’ estimated light, speed, and kinetic energy, Edward Teller suggested that if they were not characteristic of a “material body,” they “might be an electron phenomenon.”

LaPaz replied, “You see why I’m puzzled, Dr. Teller.”

“Nothing like this, to my knowledge, has ever been observed in the case of meteorite drops,” he added.

At the conclusion of the meeting, another scientist said, “The puzzling thing is the long horizontal path; also, absence of noise is puzzling.”

When meteors fall through the atmosphere, their high speed creates a sonic boom, along with other noises, sometimes a crackling or “whooshing” sound.

‘Six-Pointed Star’ Near China

A 12-second infrared sensor video came from the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command last year, showing “an area of contrast resembling a six-pointed star” that remains in the center of the screen.

The Pentagon said the video was taken near China over the Yellow Sea.

The area of contrast looks similar to the “eight-pointed star with arms of alternating length” that was submitted by U.S. Central Command in 2013, and featured in the Pentagon’s initial batch of UFO files released in early May.

Another video taken in 2025, this time over the East China Sea, shows what appears to be an object tracking across the sky for nearly five minutes.

What is seemingly multiple areas of contrast moving in formation across the sky, at times appearing like a curved line similar to a massive, fast-moving flock of birds, was shown in a video taken over the South China Sea in 2024.

Intrusion Near Nuclear Facility

The Energy Department included a file detailing a UFO sighting in the airspace over the Pantex nuclear weapons facility near Amarillo, Texas, in 2015.

Two officers reported seeing the object at 7 a.m. local time flying northward “in a non-threatening manner” at roughly 10 to 15 miles per hour.

As the facility was placed on lockdown, the officers continued tracking the object and, through binoculars, reported that it looked to be approximately four feet tall and two feet wide at the bottom.

“They noted that the object did not make any sound. Furthermore, the [lieutenant and security police officer] stated that they were unable to identify any type of propulsion system on the object while using binoculars to assess the object. After viewing it for 1-2 minutes, the object then continued north offsite,” the report states.

Observers were split on the object’s color, with some reporting it looked black, while others said it “appeared to be silver, red, and blue.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 11:40

Was SK Hynix's US Debut The AI Bubble Top? BNP Says It's Still 1998

With SK Hynix's American depositary receipts now trading under the temporary ticker SKHYV as of late Friday morning, the seven-times-oversubscribed offering highlights Wall Street's rush for more direct exposure to high-bandwidth memory amid the AI infrastructure boom.

Against the backdrop of mounting concerns about an AI infrastructure bubble, Roth Capital Partners' sales trading team asked clients earlier Friday: "How will investors, looking back two years from now, view the timing and significance of SK Hynix's US offering?"

Taking a look at the GS TMT Memory Exposed Index (GSTMTMEM Index), Goldman Sachs' thematic basket tracking companies with high exposure to the memory chip cycle, the trade appears to have peaked in mid-June.

Zooming in on the recent price action in the GSTMTMEM Index:

That rollover has since spread into the broader South Korean market, with the Kospi entering a bear market this week as the memory stock euphoria begins to fade.

Adding to the AI bubble doomerism camp is UBS' proprietary Market Fragility Index, an internal risk gauge measuring how vulnerable markets are to a sharp reversal or volatility shock, which currently prints at an eye-popping high.

UBS proprietary market fragility index hits all time high pic.twitter.com/zwOUS0dbGk

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 10, 2026

But not everyone on Wall Street is pessimistic, and analysts at BNP Paribas say the AI boom increasingly resembles the late 1990s.

João Torres, a European credit strategist at BNP Paribas based at the bank's Portugal branch, penned a note on Friday with a title that suggests the AI bubble has more room to inflate: "The Bubble Playbook: It's still 1998."

"Technological progress can create industrial bubbles. Chart 2: Equity IPOs following late 90s path, led by Tech We analysed the extent to which the AI buildout is evolving in line with previous industrial bubbles. The late 1990s provide a fitting playbook. In our view, AI has similarities of an industrial bubble but is not yet extreme," Torres wrote in the note.

The BNPP Bubble Indicator currently stands around the 84th percentile, driven by elevated animal spirits, valuations and earnings expectations. At that level, near-term stock returns could be positive, but historical patterns suggest softer performance over six to 12 months if the indicator moves to the 85th percentile level.

Torres put together a compelling chartpack that suggests today's environment is more like the late 1990s:

Chart 1: Technological breakthroughs can lead to industrial bubbles

Chart 2: Equity IPOs following late 90s path, led by Tech

Chart 3: Spreads tend to widen when balance sheets deteriorate

Chart 4: Supply in late 90s – from K-shaped to a crowding-in effect

Chart 5: Expectations are rising faster just as they did in the late 90s

Chart 6: Great Expectations – a new paradigm ahead

Chart 7: $ HY Risk Premium – low but not extreme

Chart 8: Credit Conditions are not restrictive yet

Chart 9: The Fed could resume rate hikes, as in the late 90s

Chart 10: BNPP Bubble Indicator is currently at the 84th percentile

Chart 11: Closest template is the dotcom bubble

Chart 12: Overweight $ IG Banks vs. $ IG Corporates

Chart 13: € IG TMT: Reverse Yankees are trading wide vs. Domestic

Professional subscribers can read more on memory and KOSPI at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 11:05

Muhammad Tops Baby Boys' Names In England And Wales For Third Straight Year

Official Office for National Statistics (ONS) data released today shows Muhammad - including variant spellings - has once again claimed the top spot as the most popular name for newborn boys in England and Wales.

This marks the third consecutive year Muhammad has led the boys' chart, continuing a trend that has drawn significant public attention and debate about demographic changes.

The ONS figures for 2025 births confirm Muhammad's dominant position. In previous years, when spellings are combined, it has frequently outranked traditional English names like Oliver and Noah.

Commentators have linked the sustained popularity to the UK's growing Muslim population, which now makes up a significant and increasing share of births in many areas.

Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe responded strongly to the news, posting: “Muhammad has comfortably topped the list for the most popular boy name for the third year running. You can call me Islamophobic, I really don’t care… This is awful and demonstrates the rapidly changing demographics of our country.”

'Muhammad' has comfortably topped the list for the most popular boy name for the third year running.

You can call me Islamophobic, I really don't care.

This is awful and demonstrates the rapidly changing demographics of our country.

Only Restore Britain will fight this.

— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) July 9, 2026

Lowe, who recently chaired an independent Rape Gang Inquiry Report, has highlighted concerns about integration, cultural shifts, and failures in addressing grooming gangs. His report estimates that at least 250,000 young, mostly white British girls have been victims of systematic abuse by predominantly Pakistani Muslim grooming networks over decades, with institutional cover-ups exacerbating the crisis.

The report and Lowe's comments tie into broader discussions about rapid demographic transformation, with critics arguing that names like Muhammad's dominance reflect communities that have not fully integrated and, in some cases, parallel issues seen in grooming gang scandals where perpetrators often shared similar names and backgrounds.

Broader Implications

While many celebrate Britain's multiculturalism, others like Lowe warn of parallel societies and strain on social cohesion. The baby name data is often cited alongside grooming gang reports as evidence of deeper cultural challenges.

Full ONS rankings for 2025 are expected to provide more context on rising and falling names across both genders.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 09:55

Small Business Chapter 11 Filings Increase 50% Year Over Year

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Small business Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings jumped 50 percent in the first half of 2026 from the same period last year, signaling pressure on business owners.

Chapter 11 is a type of bankruptcy filing that reorganizes a company’s debt to keep it afloat and allow the entity to become solvent. Subchapter V of Chapter 11 relates to small business filings. In the first half of this year, a total of 1,663 Subchapter V bankruptcy filings were made, up from 1,107 filings in the first half of 2025, the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) said in a July 8 statement.

Overall commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings also increased, with 4,589 filings in the first half, up by 28 percent annually.

“The increase in bankruptcy filings over the past year, particularly among small businesses, reflects ongoing financial pressures facing households and employers,” ABI Executive Director Amy Quackenboss said in a statement.

“Higher borrowing costs, increasing expenses, and geopolitical volatility are leading more debtors to turn to the bankruptcy system to restructure obligations and pursue a financial fresh start.”

Optimistic sentiment among small businesses has dipped. In a June 9 statement, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) said that its Small Business Optimism Index declined in May. The index is based on surveys of NFIB members.

Eighteen percent of respondents cited inflation as the single most important business problem they face, the highest level since December 2024.

A net 36 percent of respondents in the survey raised their average selling prices, the highest since March 2023. A net 34 percent said they planned to raise prices.

The NFIB had called on Congress to advance small business priorities this year, according to a Jan. 6 statement from the organization.

Top priorities include lowering healthcare costs for small business owners, reducing fuel and electricity costs, passing regulatory reforms, minimizing labor mandates, and granting the right to repair cars, smartphones, and tractors.

“2025 was an eventful year for small businesses, highlighted by the permanent extension of the 20 percent Small Business Deduction, which stopped a massive tax hike on more than 33 million small business owners nationwide,” NFIB Senior Vice President for Advocacy Adam Temple said in a statement.

A tax relief provision that allowed small businesses to deduct up to 20 percent of their qualified business income was set to expire after 2025, but was made permanent under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump last year.

Congress should now “pass legislation that will allow the small business economy to flourish and make life more affordable for consumers,” Temple added.

Supporting Small Businesses

In May, the Small Business Administration announced a new $50 million grant to support the Made in America manufacturing initiative.

The fund aims to ensure small domestic manufacturers receive the necessary technical assistance and training.

During March 30 remarks at a business conference, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act led to a reduction in taxes for roughly 12 million small business owners by almost $7,000 on average.

President Donald Trump, joined by Republican lawmakers, signs the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law during an Independence Day military family picnic on the South Lawn of the White House on July 4, 2025. Samuel Corum/Getty Images

“Across the country, households and businesses are already seeing the benefits of this legislation, with millions of Americans keeping more of what they earn and watching their paychecks go further,” Bessent said at the time.

The unemployment situation has also improved, with fewer Americans applying for unemployment benefits in the week ending July 4 than in the previous week. At 215,000 claims, the figure was also below economists’ expectations of 218,000 claims.

This was a reversal from a rising trend over the previous two months, which economists attribute to the trend of non-teaching staff from educational institutions applying for unemployment benefits during the summer holiday.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called for maintaining the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) deal in a June 29 statement, citing benefits for American businesses.

The Chamber said that more than 13 million U.S. jobs in agriculture, manufacturing, energy, and service sectors are dependent on North American trade.

Streamlined trade facilitation measures and preferential treatment enabled by the USMCA allowed small businesses to compete in international markets, the Chamber said.

On July 1, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said that the United States opted not to renew the USMCA deal in its current form.

Washington will discuss with partners to “address the Agreement’s shortcomings and our trade deficits with these countries,” he said. The deal has not been canceled and remains in force pending the resolution of disagreements or until it expires.

Lawmakers have criticized USMCA for offshoring manufacturing jobs from the United States and causing a depression in domestic wages.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 09:20

Cuba Plunges Into Second Island-Wide Blackout As Communist System Unravels

Cuba suffered its second nationwide blackout in a matter of days late Friday, another sign that the communist-controlled island is sliding deeper into economic collapse amid tightening US sanctions and renewed pressure from the Trump administration.

Havana blames US "gunboat diplomacy" and the financial sanctions for its economic demise, but the roots of the crisis are decades of communist rule, chronic underinvestment, widespread economic mismanagement and a crumbling power grid.

Yet America's Democratic Party is increasingly embracing socialism and communist ideology, a deeply misguided political messaging campaign at a time when Cuba is offering a real-world case study in how such systems repeatedly fail, leaving economic ruin, institutional decay and human suffering in their aftermath.

The latest islandwide blackout came as four US lawmakers urged the Trump administration to sanction Cuba's state-run overseas medical-services operator, arguing it exploits healthcare workers and generates revenue for the communist regime.

As we've described, the Feds are in the process of dismantling the command and control structure of a Cuba/China foreign subversion network with alleged links to left-wing NGOs and Democratic Party socialists:

• Leaked Memo Shows 'Pro-Cuba' NGO Network Preparing To Target ICE, US Bases, Federal Buildings
• "No Longer Tolerate Radical Marxists": Rubio Sanctions Revolutionary Cuban Influence Network Tied To U.S. Left-Wing NGOs
• Feds Nab Alleged Member Of "Sprawling" Cuban Communist Subversion Network Linked To Hasan Piker's Havana Trip
• DOJ Grand Jury Probes Neville Roy Singham's Marxist NGO Empire: Report

Even top Democrats are calling for investigations:

• Bill Clinton Insider Warns Of Socialist Takeover, Calls For Probe Into Possible DSA Foreign Ties

Back to the blackout. Just before the first nationwide outage earlier this week, Raúl Castro's grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, told USA Today that he was prepared to negotiate with President Trump.

The timing is notable. The Trump administration is intensifying pressure on Havana as Cuba's communist regime continues to implode, and at some point, will eventually force the regime toward market reforms and a greater role for capitalism.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/11/2026 - 08:45