Recent well liked threads
; insecure
jeno au
written by amourhyuckie
jeno au
written by amourhyuckie
kepala aunya ke delete.. yg mw baca ke sini aja 😭✋🏻
yang mau ditag setiap update bisa rep disini
La mayoría de hombres ignoran la forma más simple de mejorar su apariencia.
Solo necesitas un producto: vaselina.
Aquí tienes 7 trucos con vaselina que pueden transformar tu aspecto (y tu vida): 🧵
Solo necesitas un producto: vaselina.
Aquí tienes 7 trucos con vaselina que pueden transformar tu aspecto (y tu vida): 🧵
1. Haz que tu fragancia dure todo el día.
¿Notas cómo tu perfume desaparece en pocas horas?
Solución:
* Calienta un tarro de vaselina en agua hirviendo
* Rocía tu colonia favorita dentro
* Deja enfriar y solidificar
Aplica en puntos de pulso y olerás increíble durante horas.
¿Notas cómo tu perfume desaparece en pocas horas?
Solución:
* Calienta un tarro de vaselina en agua hirviendo
* Rocía tu colonia favorita dentro
* Deja enfriar y solidificar
Aplica en puntos de pulso y olerás increíble durante horas.
2. Engrosa tus cejas.
Unas cejas pobladas y cuidadas marcan carácter.
* Frota un poco de vaselina entre tus dedos
* Aplícala peinando hacia arriba y afuera
Resultado: cejas más llenas y con forma definida.
Unas cejas pobladas y cuidadas marcan carácter.
* Frota un poco de vaselina entre tus dedos
* Aplícala peinando hacia arriba y afuera
Resultado: cejas más llenas y con forma definida.
🚨EXCLUSIVE
The firm at the heart of Britain's critical minerals strategy has ditched plans for a rare earths refinery in the UK, and will build it in the US instead.
It's a serious blow to the Chancellor and her plans for "securonomics" ahead of next month's Budget👇
The firm at the heart of Britain's critical minerals strategy has ditched plans for a rare earths refinery in the UK, and will build it in the US instead.
It's a serious blow to the Chancellor and her plans for "securonomics" ahead of next month's Budget👇
Not long ago Pensana was being hailed as key to Britain's industrial future.
It had plans to ship rare earth ores to the UK and refine them in a plant just outside Hull, creating 126 jobs and bringing in hundreds of millions of pounds of investment...
It had plans to ship rare earth ores to the UK and refine them in a plant just outside Hull, creating 126 jobs and bringing in hundreds of millions of pounds of investment...
Its Saltend site was where the then Biz sec Kwasi Kwarteng launched the govt's official critical minerals strategy a few years ago, saying: "This incredible facility will be the only of its kind in Europe and will help secure the resilience of Britain's supplies into the future"
Democrats underestimated Republicans, and lost the meme war. Republicans underestimated China, and are unfortunately losing the trade war. And some in China may underestimate the free Internet, where choice can triumph over force.
This requires some explanation. Let's go.
(1) First, as a reality shill, we should stipulate that modern China is perhaps the most physically formidable country to ever exist. Visualize a young Bolo Yeung from Bloodsport. It's #1 in electricity, cars, steel, ships, and countless other industries. No country can realistically win a war against today's China, especially in its own backyard, especially over Taiwan. They can just outbuild everyone else:
(2) And the US on some level now recognizes this. Secretary Hegseth noted on the Shawn Ryan pod that Chinese hypersonics can sink all US aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of any Taiwan straits conflict[1]. The CEO of Raytheon admitted[2] the US couldn't practically decouple from China. The former Secretary of the Navy, Carlos del Toro, stated[3] that one Chinese shipyard can produce more ships than the entire US Navy combined. And the Pentagon's own $400M study[4] showed that much of the US military is actually made in China:
(3) This may be why the US is currently effecting a shouting retreat. Even as the military is rebranded to the Department of War, US troops are reportedly[5] being pulled back to actually focus on homeland defense and the war within. And even while there's posting about annexing Greenland and invading Canada, in reality European NATO is being asked to fend for itself. Basically, the words are about expanding American real estate, but the reality is that America is withdrawing from the world:
(4) Now, some will say this isn't a bad thing. After all, America is a republic, not an empire! OK, but the business model of the US is money printing, which is premised on the continuation of global empire. That's because dollar inflation is global taxation, since the inflationary dilution is currently spread across billions of global dollar holders. However...as US troops come back and US tariffs go up, the de facto tax base for dollar inflation shrinks from ~1-3B globally to just 330M Americans. That 67-90% drop in tax base will cause a huge drop in American living standards. We're in the middle of this now; gold and digital gold are smashing all time highs[6], because the dollar is crashing through all-time lows.
(5) Moreover, because the sovereign debt crisis is underway in America, Western Europe, and Japan at the same time, you're seeing a simultaneous fall of all parts of the empire at once. As you can see from the graphs below, yields are high in the US, Germany, Japan, UK, Italy, and France...even as they're falling in China...and even as the world economy has decisively moved to Asia:
(6) So, we are essentially in the midst of the fall of Rome[7]. For the first time in 500+ years, the world's dominant military power is no longer Western. While the shift towards Europe took hundreds of years, the shift back to Asia took just a few decades. It happened so fast that many don't realize that the world economy has already moved back to Asia.
(7) Many Westerners are still in various stages of denial about this fact, or the fact that the US government is insolvent. Elon is our best guy, and gave it his all, and he's already recognized[8] that it's over ("did my best"). But there's still residual romanticism about America's ability to re-industrialize.
(8) In many ways, MAGA still identifies as a manufacturing superpower, and they just don't want to hear that it took 45+ years of grinding in factories for China to get where it is, and that 45% tariffs won't return America overnight to the economy (let alone the demographics) of 1945. There may be a post-dollar path to rebuilding, but it'd be like Russia's post-Soviet path. And the first step in that path would look more like deregulation and special economic zones[9], rather than tariffing away America's access to raw materials and machine tools.
(9) Anyway, I want to skip over the dollar collapse part of all this, because it'll be an unfortunate denouement to what was once the greatest empire of all time. Let's skip ahead to the next question of: what force could possibly rise to balance China after the dollar ends?
(10) Well, after the Roman Empire fell, Christianity endured, and was eventually the seed for civilizational rebirth. Similarly, after the dollar empire ends, the Internet will endure — and could be the seed for civilizational rebirth.
(11) Think of the progression from European Christendom, to the West, to the Internet. Each such shift was a geographical and technological and demographic change[10]...but most of all it was a change in self-understanding.
(12) We already know on some level that the Internet is the most powerful force in the world. It manages 99% of transactions and communications, it's upstream of every politician and election, it controls everything from smart locks to autonomous drones, and it's even in front of your face right now.
(13) Nevertheless, because it's currently[11] intangible, the Internet is still underestimated. The Chinese state does actually get it on some level, which is why they built the Great Firewall as a hard digital border that keeps out foreign ideas (and foreign drones). But post-Maoist China doesn't really have an ideology that's built for export. Chinese nationalism does make intuitive sense to ~1.4B Chinese, so it has sufficient scale to coordinate huge numbers of productive people domestically...but the other 7B+ globally will need something else.
(14) That is: China is a goods exporter, but an idea importer. After all, its three major operating systems of Buddhism, Communism, and Technocapitalism were imported from India, Europe, and America respectively. To be fair, China did fork these operating systems, and made them their own (eg: communism with Chinese characteristics), and China does have an impressive 5000+ year history of arts and literature. But for whatever reason, Chinese culture mainly exports visual vibes (eg TikTok, Hong Kong cinema, glowing cities) rather than verbal ideas.
(15) So, because China doesn't export a conceptual operating system that anyone in the world can adopt and fork, there will be a post-dollar ideological vacuum that's only incompletely filled by a return to nationalism. Many need something higher than the mere earth, and the cloud is something higher. The next Rome, the next Britain, the next America, the next universalist society — that will arise from the Internet, which after all is uniform rule-of-code.
(16) Finally, to @JZ281C's point...these Internet societies cannot and should not physically confront China or (as they put it) interfere in China's internal affairs. Against the Chinese drone armada, you'll still need some residual local deterrence, but the Internet will mainly need to rely on Gandhian non-violence, invisibility, agility, encryption, and decentralization. You just can't take on a superior physical force in the physical world.
(17) Still, because the Internet is intangible it will be underestimated, and this underestimation is itself a strength. The invisibility of the Internet, the dismissibility of it, is the English-compatible version of hide your strength and bide your time. Despite the fact that billions spend much of their waking lives on the Internet, it's still not thought of as the primary organizing principle of their life. This underestimation gives us room for the long rebuild on Internet First[12] principles.
(18) Specifically: the Internet will not be able to take on China in the physical world, but it will generate universalist ideas that appeal to many Chinese (and non-Chinese) people. It will therefore provide many alternative ideologies to Chinese nationalism outside China, whose collective strength may balance (not beat) China.
(19) How does this play out? We could see a billion-person Chinese superstate, and a thousand million-person network states. If one is a vegan village and the second a carnivore community and the third is a biohacker borough, these societies are mutually incompatible with each other. Moreover, their governing ideas can't all be imported into China as their moral premises are different from Chinese nationalism. So these network states become alternatives to China, balances to China, without needing to fight China.
(20) We'll know they're a balance if Chinese nationals voluntarily choose to exit to one of these 1000 startup societies, as an alternative to the 100s of polished Chinese cities. They might do this for much the same reason one chooses a startup over Google: because of the upside, the choice, the variety, the editability.
(21) Yet at the same time the mere existence of these alternative societies around the world wouldn't provoke China. And China wouldn't gain from conquering them, as they'd want to avoid the expensive Roman/British/French/Soviet/American failure mode of endless military intervention. Even if it did conquer some, it couldn't really conquer one thousand, if new startup societies kept popping up every day.
(22) In other words: ideas are upstream of men, code is upstream of drones, private property is private keys, and the keyboard may yet prove on par with the sword. The creation of alternative societies is one model for how the Internet may eventually balance China.
This requires some explanation. Let's go.
(1) First, as a reality shill, we should stipulate that modern China is perhaps the most physically formidable country to ever exist. Visualize a young Bolo Yeung from Bloodsport. It's #1 in electricity, cars, steel, ships, and countless other industries. No country can realistically win a war against today's China, especially in its own backyard, especially over Taiwan. They can just outbuild everyone else:
(2) And the US on some level now recognizes this. Secretary Hegseth noted on the Shawn Ryan pod that Chinese hypersonics can sink all US aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of any Taiwan straits conflict[1]. The CEO of Raytheon admitted[2] the US couldn't practically decouple from China. The former Secretary of the Navy, Carlos del Toro, stated[3] that one Chinese shipyard can produce more ships than the entire US Navy combined. And the Pentagon's own $400M study[4] showed that much of the US military is actually made in China:
(3) This may be why the US is currently effecting a shouting retreat. Even as the military is rebranded to the Department of War, US troops are reportedly[5] being pulled back to actually focus on homeland defense and the war within. And even while there's posting about annexing Greenland and invading Canada, in reality European NATO is being asked to fend for itself. Basically, the words are about expanding American real estate, but the reality is that America is withdrawing from the world:
(4) Now, some will say this isn't a bad thing. After all, America is a republic, not an empire! OK, but the business model of the US is money printing, which is premised on the continuation of global empire. That's because dollar inflation is global taxation, since the inflationary dilution is currently spread across billions of global dollar holders. However...as US troops come back and US tariffs go up, the de facto tax base for dollar inflation shrinks from ~1-3B globally to just 330M Americans. That 67-90% drop in tax base will cause a huge drop in American living standards. We're in the middle of this now; gold and digital gold are smashing all time highs[6], because the dollar is crashing through all-time lows.
(5) Moreover, because the sovereign debt crisis is underway in America, Western Europe, and Japan at the same time, you're seeing a simultaneous fall of all parts of the empire at once. As you can see from the graphs below, yields are high in the US, Germany, Japan, UK, Italy, and France...even as they're falling in China...and even as the world economy has decisively moved to Asia:
(6) So, we are essentially in the midst of the fall of Rome[7]. For the first time in 500+ years, the world's dominant military power is no longer Western. While the shift towards Europe took hundreds of years, the shift back to Asia took just a few decades. It happened so fast that many don't realize that the world economy has already moved back to Asia.
(7) Many Westerners are still in various stages of denial about this fact, or the fact that the US government is insolvent. Elon is our best guy, and gave it his all, and he's already recognized[8] that it's over ("did my best"). But there's still residual romanticism about America's ability to re-industrialize.
(8) In many ways, MAGA still identifies as a manufacturing superpower, and they just don't want to hear that it took 45+ years of grinding in factories for China to get where it is, and that 45% tariffs won't return America overnight to the economy (let alone the demographics) of 1945. There may be a post-dollar path to rebuilding, but it'd be like Russia's post-Soviet path. And the first step in that path would look more like deregulation and special economic zones[9], rather than tariffing away America's access to raw materials and machine tools.
(9) Anyway, I want to skip over the dollar collapse part of all this, because it'll be an unfortunate denouement to what was once the greatest empire of all time. Let's skip ahead to the next question of: what force could possibly rise to balance China after the dollar ends?
(10) Well, after the Roman Empire fell, Christianity endured, and was eventually the seed for civilizational rebirth. Similarly, after the dollar empire ends, the Internet will endure — and could be the seed for civilizational rebirth.
(11) Think of the progression from European Christendom, to the West, to the Internet. Each such shift was a geographical and technological and demographic change[10]...but most of all it was a change in self-understanding.
(12) We already know on some level that the Internet is the most powerful force in the world. It manages 99% of transactions and communications, it's upstream of every politician and election, it controls everything from smart locks to autonomous drones, and it's even in front of your face right now.
(13) Nevertheless, because it's currently[11] intangible, the Internet is still underestimated. The Chinese state does actually get it on some level, which is why they built the Great Firewall as a hard digital border that keeps out foreign ideas (and foreign drones). But post-Maoist China doesn't really have an ideology that's built for export. Chinese nationalism does make intuitive sense to ~1.4B Chinese, so it has sufficient scale to coordinate huge numbers of productive people domestically...but the other 7B+ globally will need something else.
(14) That is: China is a goods exporter, but an idea importer. After all, its three major operating systems of Buddhism, Communism, and Technocapitalism were imported from India, Europe, and America respectively. To be fair, China did fork these operating systems, and made them their own (eg: communism with Chinese characteristics), and China does have an impressive 5000+ year history of arts and literature. But for whatever reason, Chinese culture mainly exports visual vibes (eg TikTok, Hong Kong cinema, glowing cities) rather than verbal ideas.
(15) So, because China doesn't export a conceptual operating system that anyone in the world can adopt and fork, there will be a post-dollar ideological vacuum that's only incompletely filled by a return to nationalism. Many need something higher than the mere earth, and the cloud is something higher. The next Rome, the next Britain, the next America, the next universalist society — that will arise from the Internet, which after all is uniform rule-of-code.
(16) Finally, to @JZ281C's point...these Internet societies cannot and should not physically confront China or (as they put it) interfere in China's internal affairs. Against the Chinese drone armada, you'll still need some residual local deterrence, but the Internet will mainly need to rely on Gandhian non-violence, invisibility, agility, encryption, and decentralization. You just can't take on a superior physical force in the physical world.
(17) Still, because the Internet is intangible it will be underestimated, and this underestimation is itself a strength. The invisibility of the Internet, the dismissibility of it, is the English-compatible version of hide your strength and bide your time. Despite the fact that billions spend much of their waking lives on the Internet, it's still not thought of as the primary organizing principle of their life. This underestimation gives us room for the long rebuild on Internet First[12] principles.
(18) Specifically: the Internet will not be able to take on China in the physical world, but it will generate universalist ideas that appeal to many Chinese (and non-Chinese) people. It will therefore provide many alternative ideologies to Chinese nationalism outside China, whose collective strength may balance (not beat) China.
(19) How does this play out? We could see a billion-person Chinese superstate, and a thousand million-person network states. If one is a vegan village and the second a carnivore community and the third is a biohacker borough, these societies are mutually incompatible with each other. Moreover, their governing ideas can't all be imported into China as their moral premises are different from Chinese nationalism. So these network states become alternatives to China, balances to China, without needing to fight China.
(20) We'll know they're a balance if Chinese nationals voluntarily choose to exit to one of these 1000 startup societies, as an alternative to the 100s of polished Chinese cities. They might do this for much the same reason one chooses a startup over Google: because of the upside, the choice, the variety, the editability.
(21) Yet at the same time the mere existence of these alternative societies around the world wouldn't provoke China. And China wouldn't gain from conquering them, as they'd want to avoid the expensive Roman/British/French/Soviet/American failure mode of endless military intervention. Even if it did conquer some, it couldn't really conquer one thousand, if new startup societies kept popping up every day.
(22) In other words: ideas are upstream of men, code is upstream of drones, private property is private keys, and the keyboard may yet prove on par with the sword. The creation of alternative societies is one model for how the Internet may eventually balance China.
One thing I want to stress: this is the Flight 93 Administration.
What that means is: many in the administration really are smart, well-intentioned men who managed to rush the cockpit against all odds, take control of the plane from abolish-the-police ideological terrorists, and are now trying to avert a crash landing. Some also do get how difficult the strategic situation vs China and the debt and so on is.
But if you look at the numbers, the plane's relative descent has been going on for decades and is now likely irreversible:
Even this relative descent might not be the end of the world if the US exported tomatoes and cars. However, it mainly exports dollars. And the issuer of the global reserve currency can't tolerate a gradual decline, because losing money printing ability will mean an Argentina-like tumble to something like the #50 spot rather than a graceful descent to #2.
That's what underpins the push to retain or even expand empire, a push that is now nearing the end of the line. For obvious reasons, the American public doesn't really want to hear this kind of truth, and it's also not obvious that saying it would help.
Anyway: I'm not constrained in that way, so I can speak the truth as I see it. I may of course be wrong, but citations follow.
CITATIONS
[1]: Clip of Hegseth on the Shawn Ryan pod before he became Secretary: "If 15 [Chinese] hypersonic missiles can take out our ten aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of a conflict, what does that look like?"
youtube.com/shorts/tetPM-R…
[2]: Video of Raytheon CEO explaining that they can't decouple from China:
x.com/balajis/status…
[3]: Clip of former US Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro noting that one Chinese shipyard has more shipbuilding capacity than the entire US Navy combined:
x.com/balajis/status…
[4]: Pentagon-commissioned Govini study showing that the US military is made in China: x.com/balajis/status…
[5]: Pentagon is reportedly withdrawing from China to focus on the Western hemisphere:
x.com/balajis/status…
[5b]: See also @DoggyDog1208 on how China may have scaled so fast that it obviated the Thucydides trap: x.com/balajis/status…
[6]: Dollar inflation is global taxation:
x.com/balajis/status…
Yields up, gold and digital gold at all time highs:
x.com/balajis/status…
[7]: Graph from @LukeGromen showing the debasement of the Roman denarius vs the debasement of the American dollar:
[8]: Elon is our best guy, and went all in, and concluded that he did his best. He further noted on the All-In Pod that the US government is simply beyond fixing:
x.com/elonmusk/statu…
If you combine his notes with Dalio, Turchin, the Sovereign Individual, the Fourth Turning, and frankly dozens of other commentators at this point...what emerges isthat something comparable to the end of the USSR is approaching, a national insolvency.
[9]: I wrote a piece on an Internet-native version of the special economic zone, the Special Elon Zone. Essentially, take some abandoned piece of land, keep most of the laws, but sunset select old regulations so that we can build at the speed of physics not permits:
x.com/balajis/status…
[10]: Here's a bit more on the shift from Christendom to the West, which will be comparably important to the shift from the West to the Internet. It isn't just the American dollar decentralizing to the Internet via Bitcoin, but American society.
x.com/balajis/status…
[11]: The Internet is currently intangible, but it won't always be so. See this post on how popups are the new startups:
balajis.com/p/popups-are-t…
[12]: The concept of "Internet First" is simultaneously a play on words of "America First" but also "mobile first". It's a technopolitical strategy. It observes that the Internet is the first thing you check in the morning, and the first place you go for your transactions and your communications, and actually also the first place for ostensibly Nation First political movements.
The logic is that ultimately the Internet will come from the background to the foreground, and that 21st century ideologies will be built explicitly on Internet First grounds.
Or as Larry Page put it, "If you look at the different kinds of laws we make, they're very old. The laws when we went public we're 50 years old...A law can't [necessarily] be right if it's 50 years old, like it's before the Internet, that's a pretty major change."
x.com/balajis/status…
What that means is: many in the administration really are smart, well-intentioned men who managed to rush the cockpit against all odds, take control of the plane from abolish-the-police ideological terrorists, and are now trying to avert a crash landing. Some also do get how difficult the strategic situation vs China and the debt and so on is.
But if you look at the numbers, the plane's relative descent has been going on for decades and is now likely irreversible:
Even this relative descent might not be the end of the world if the US exported tomatoes and cars. However, it mainly exports dollars. And the issuer of the global reserve currency can't tolerate a gradual decline, because losing money printing ability will mean an Argentina-like tumble to something like the #50 spot rather than a graceful descent to #2.
That's what underpins the push to retain or even expand empire, a push that is now nearing the end of the line. For obvious reasons, the American public doesn't really want to hear this kind of truth, and it's also not obvious that saying it would help.
Anyway: I'm not constrained in that way, so I can speak the truth as I see it. I may of course be wrong, but citations follow.
CITATIONS
[1]: Clip of Hegseth on the Shawn Ryan pod before he became Secretary: "If 15 [Chinese] hypersonic missiles can take out our ten aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of a conflict, what does that look like?"
youtube.com/shorts/tetPM-R…
[2]: Video of Raytheon CEO explaining that they can't decouple from China:
x.com/balajis/status…
[3]: Clip of former US Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro noting that one Chinese shipyard has more shipbuilding capacity than the entire US Navy combined:
x.com/balajis/status…
[4]: Pentagon-commissioned Govini study showing that the US military is made in China: x.com/balajis/status…
[5]: Pentagon is reportedly withdrawing from China to focus on the Western hemisphere:
x.com/balajis/status…
[5b]: See also @DoggyDog1208 on how China may have scaled so fast that it obviated the Thucydides trap: x.com/balajis/status…
[6]: Dollar inflation is global taxation:
x.com/balajis/status…
Yields up, gold and digital gold at all time highs:
x.com/balajis/status…
[7]: Graph from @LukeGromen showing the debasement of the Roman denarius vs the debasement of the American dollar:
[8]: Elon is our best guy, and went all in, and concluded that he did his best. He further noted on the All-In Pod that the US government is simply beyond fixing:
x.com/elonmusk/statu…
If you combine his notes with Dalio, Turchin, the Sovereign Individual, the Fourth Turning, and frankly dozens of other commentators at this point...what emerges isthat something comparable to the end of the USSR is approaching, a national insolvency.
[9]: I wrote a piece on an Internet-native version of the special economic zone, the Special Elon Zone. Essentially, take some abandoned piece of land, keep most of the laws, but sunset select old regulations so that we can build at the speed of physics not permits:
x.com/balajis/status…
[10]: Here's a bit more on the shift from Christendom to the West, which will be comparably important to the shift from the West to the Internet. It isn't just the American dollar decentralizing to the Internet via Bitcoin, but American society.
x.com/balajis/status…
[11]: The Internet is currently intangible, but it won't always be so. See this post on how popups are the new startups:
balajis.com/p/popups-are-t…
[12]: The concept of "Internet First" is simultaneously a play on words of "America First" but also "mobile first". It's a technopolitical strategy. It observes that the Internet is the first thing you check in the morning, and the first place you go for your transactions and your communications, and actually also the first place for ostensibly Nation First political movements.
The logic is that ultimately the Internet will come from the background to the foreground, and that 21st century ideologies will be built explicitly on Internet First grounds.
Or as Larry Page put it, "If you look at the different kinds of laws we make, they're very old. The laws when we went public we're 50 years old...A law can't [necessarily] be right if it's 50 years old, like it's before the Internet, that's a pretty major change."
x.com/balajis/status…
When all else goes down, the Internet stays up. So, after a catastrophe, we restore from cloud.
We're actually already used to this idea, and even have icons for it. We just need to scale it up from individuals to communities. Bitcoin is like v1 of that.
We're actually already used to this idea, and even have icons for it. We just need to scale it up from individuals to communities. Bitcoin is like v1 of that.
🧵Behind Closed Doors: How the Deal With Hamas Was Born.
If Israelis had heard how the President of the United States spoke about the hostages, it’s doubtful that he would have received such thunderous cheers at Hostages’ Square last Saturday night. To say they were a secondary concern for him would be an understatement — and even that understates it.
Donald Trump favored eliminating Hamas the American way, and 20 living hostages (he was always confused about their number and minimized it — I wonder what Sigmund Freud would have said) seemed to him a marginal matter, collateral damage.
Only belatedly did he perceive how strategic the issue was for the Israelis, and therefore for their government as well. In the United States, presidents have usually not been criticized for meeting hostages’ families too little, but for doing so too often (for details, Google “Ronald Reagan”).
In one of the discussions before Operation Gideon’s Chariots B began, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the scar that would remain in Israeli society if the IDF conquered Gaza City at the cost of the hostages’ lives. Allow me to guess that he never really believed that moment would come.
Indeed, in recent months, Netanyahu and Ron Dermer’s assessment was that an operation to conquer Gaza City, if it happens, may well begin, but most certainly would not reach completion. Here is the inside story.
Following the successful war in Iran, Israel tried to use the momentum to reach a partial deal in Gaza. The idea was to release half the hostages and, during a 60-day ceasefire, arrive more or less at the conditions achieved this week.
But Hamas, inspired by a Gaza starvation campaign that was gaining international traction, refused. President Trump, still in the shadow of Israel’s victory in Iran, thought the IDF could eliminate the remnants of Hamas as quickly as it smashed Tehran’s nuclear program. Ultimately, the combination of Hamas’ refusal and the president’s ambition led Israel to decide to enter Gaza City.
The idea was proposed by former Shin Bet chief and current Minister Avi Dichter: conquering the city is the end of Hamas, he said at one meeting. The magic happened almost immediately: “Even before our forces entered the city,” Dermer recounted, “three days of talk about the operation did what three months of negotiations failed to do. Hamas suddenly agreed to a partial deal. But by then time had already run out.”
Israel faced two options: one, to conquer the remainder of the strip and establish a military government with American support. Dermer and Netanyahu, however, believed that would require national unity and backing from Trump. The first component did not exist, and the second was highly unlikely.
The second option was a plan manufactured by Israel, led by the Americans, and supported by Arab states. President Reagan once told his people: you’ll write the plans, and I’ll be the presenter who markets them.
This plan was no different, with Dermer filling the role of the writer. It was clear that any plan presented as purely Israeli would be pronounced dead before it was even born. That doesn’t mean every tweet was coordinated, Dermer said at a cabinet meeting this week, but on the big matters, Jerusalem and Washington moved together.
Thus began arduous negotiations with Middle Eastern countries. During a round of talks in New York, it seemed impossible to get all those elephants into the same private room. Nevertheless, Israel’s representatives returned from there with 17 substantive comments from the Sunni states and even an agreement in the offing.
1/3
If Israelis had heard how the President of the United States spoke about the hostages, it’s doubtful that he would have received such thunderous cheers at Hostages’ Square last Saturday night. To say they were a secondary concern for him would be an understatement — and even that understates it.
Donald Trump favored eliminating Hamas the American way, and 20 living hostages (he was always confused about their number and minimized it — I wonder what Sigmund Freud would have said) seemed to him a marginal matter, collateral damage.
Only belatedly did he perceive how strategic the issue was for the Israelis, and therefore for their government as well. In the United States, presidents have usually not been criticized for meeting hostages’ families too little, but for doing so too often (for details, Google “Ronald Reagan”).
In one of the discussions before Operation Gideon’s Chariots B began, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the scar that would remain in Israeli society if the IDF conquered Gaza City at the cost of the hostages’ lives. Allow me to guess that he never really believed that moment would come.
Indeed, in recent months, Netanyahu and Ron Dermer’s assessment was that an operation to conquer Gaza City, if it happens, may well begin, but most certainly would not reach completion. Here is the inside story.
Following the successful war in Iran, Israel tried to use the momentum to reach a partial deal in Gaza. The idea was to release half the hostages and, during a 60-day ceasefire, arrive more or less at the conditions achieved this week.
But Hamas, inspired by a Gaza starvation campaign that was gaining international traction, refused. President Trump, still in the shadow of Israel’s victory in Iran, thought the IDF could eliminate the remnants of Hamas as quickly as it smashed Tehran’s nuclear program. Ultimately, the combination of Hamas’ refusal and the president’s ambition led Israel to decide to enter Gaza City.
The idea was proposed by former Shin Bet chief and current Minister Avi Dichter: conquering the city is the end of Hamas, he said at one meeting. The magic happened almost immediately: “Even before our forces entered the city,” Dermer recounted, “three days of talk about the operation did what three months of negotiations failed to do. Hamas suddenly agreed to a partial deal. But by then time had already run out.”
Israel faced two options: one, to conquer the remainder of the strip and establish a military government with American support. Dermer and Netanyahu, however, believed that would require national unity and backing from Trump. The first component did not exist, and the second was highly unlikely.
The second option was a plan manufactured by Israel, led by the Americans, and supported by Arab states. President Reagan once told his people: you’ll write the plans, and I’ll be the presenter who markets them.
This plan was no different, with Dermer filling the role of the writer. It was clear that any plan presented as purely Israeli would be pronounced dead before it was even born. That doesn’t mean every tweet was coordinated, Dermer said at a cabinet meeting this week, but on the big matters, Jerusalem and Washington moved together.
Thus began arduous negotiations with Middle Eastern countries. During a round of talks in New York, it seemed impossible to get all those elephants into the same private room. Nevertheless, Israel’s representatives returned from there with 17 substantive comments from the Sunni states and even an agreement in the offing.
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Then came September 9. Early in the morning, a three-person phone call was held about the impending strike: Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Katz, and Minister Dermer. All three supported the attack. Many issues came up in the consultation, but one particular issue did not: none of them believed there was an Israeli commitment to the Qataris not to strike Hamas personnel on their soil.
Netanyahu called President Trump minutes earlier, but the president was groggy after a late night of discussions. It took time to reach him. The strike went ahead.
So far, it’s unclear how senior Hamas figures escaped the attack, but it’s obvious that it brought the deal closer. I recently wrote that it was the most successful failed assassination in history, in the sense that it signaled to the Qataris that the war would come to them if they did not stop their double game.
Dermer sees it differently. He links the strike to the agreement, but in a completely different way. The Qataris, it turns out, were convinced that by agreeing to host hostage release negotiations, they had obtained immunity from Israeli strikes on their soil. From their perspective, the strike was a blatant, offensive breach of that commitment.
Qatar hadn’t managed to help forge a deal for quite some time, but it’s not half bad at thwarting them. In Jerusalem, they called Qatar “the spoiler state” — one that can easily ruin any agreement, as it did to the Egyptian hostage release deal that was forming last spring behind its back.
Qatar is a complicated nation, Netanyahu recently said. What is it made of? In Jerusalem they describe two trains running behind the same engine. One, led by the ruler’s mother and brother, supports the Muslim Brotherhood and is an unmistakable hater of Israel. The other, led by the prime minister and several other senior figures, seeks rapprochement with the West.
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Netanyahu called President Trump minutes earlier, but the president was groggy after a late night of discussions. It took time to reach him. The strike went ahead.
So far, it’s unclear how senior Hamas figures escaped the attack, but it’s obvious that it brought the deal closer. I recently wrote that it was the most successful failed assassination in history, in the sense that it signaled to the Qataris that the war would come to them if they did not stop their double game.
Dermer sees it differently. He links the strike to the agreement, but in a completely different way. The Qataris, it turns out, were convinced that by agreeing to host hostage release negotiations, they had obtained immunity from Israeli strikes on their soil. From their perspective, the strike was a blatant, offensive breach of that commitment.
Qatar hadn’t managed to help forge a deal for quite some time, but it’s not half bad at thwarting them. In Jerusalem, they called Qatar “the spoiler state” — one that can easily ruin any agreement, as it did to the Egyptian hostage release deal that was forming last spring behind its back.
Qatar is a complicated nation, Netanyahu recently said. What is it made of? In Jerusalem they describe two trains running behind the same engine. One, led by the ruler’s mother and brother, supports the Muslim Brotherhood and is an unmistakable hater of Israel. The other, led by the prime minister and several other senior figures, seeks rapprochement with the West.
2/3
Around April, a turning point was identified in Doha. Relations with the United States tightened significantly, and Hamas, an oddly patronized child, became a burden and a stain. The opportunity then presented itself following the strike in Doha, when the Arab states rushed to assemble at the emir’s conference, both in anger at Israel and fear of a blue-and-white domination of the Middle East.
The Americans’ genius was to convert that negative energy into fuel to propel negotiations to their goal. You want Israel to stop? Then let’s end the war, they told the Sunni countries, and thus enlisted them in a framework that seemed impossible: a pan-Arab, almost pan-Muslim commitment to the elimination of Hamas.
Dermer drafted Netanyahu’s apology for the death of the Qatari security official; in Doha they reciprocated with a goodwill gesture by dramatically toning down Al Jazeera’s hostile tone.
More than enlisting the entire Arab world against Hamas, which had annoyed the whole region, the achievement was to enlist it for a framework that does not include the Palestinian Authority in the foreseeable future. That is, for example, what held the Emiratis back from entering Gaza a year and a half ago.
In one sense, that is the great innovation: before the plan, Gaza belonged to the Palestinian Authority; now it is Arab-international until further notice. The PA, meanwhile, hates Hamas so much that it agreed.
Yes, there will be a two-state solution, Dermer said this week. But not between the river and the sea — within the Gaza Strip itself. The plan is that as long as Hamas does not disarm, reconstruction will begin — but only in the half of the strip under Israeli control.
What two years of war did not accomplish will be done by market forces: where will the population feel it is better to live — amid the ruins under Hamas boots, or in a rehabilitated area with an Emirati-funded school and a trailer home for each family?
The Americans believe this is a temporary situation, and are convinced that Hamas will be disarmed soon. Israel, of course, is much more skeptical. In a recent meeting, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir made a request of the Americans: Explain to me please. Your multinational force, with a few battalions, enters a tunnel. Hamas operatives are armed there. How exactly does this disarm Hamas? Who exactly will hand over the weapons? And what if they don’t?
You didn’t believe the first phase would happen, the Americans said, believe that the second will happen too. Have a little faith, the Jews with an American flag on their lapel told the Jews with an Israeli flag.
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The Americans’ genius was to convert that negative energy into fuel to propel negotiations to their goal. You want Israel to stop? Then let’s end the war, they told the Sunni countries, and thus enlisted them in a framework that seemed impossible: a pan-Arab, almost pan-Muslim commitment to the elimination of Hamas.
Dermer drafted Netanyahu’s apology for the death of the Qatari security official; in Doha they reciprocated with a goodwill gesture by dramatically toning down Al Jazeera’s hostile tone.
More than enlisting the entire Arab world against Hamas, which had annoyed the whole region, the achievement was to enlist it for a framework that does not include the Palestinian Authority in the foreseeable future. That is, for example, what held the Emiratis back from entering Gaza a year and a half ago.
In one sense, that is the great innovation: before the plan, Gaza belonged to the Palestinian Authority; now it is Arab-international until further notice. The PA, meanwhile, hates Hamas so much that it agreed.
Yes, there will be a two-state solution, Dermer said this week. But not between the river and the sea — within the Gaza Strip itself. The plan is that as long as Hamas does not disarm, reconstruction will begin — but only in the half of the strip under Israeli control.
What two years of war did not accomplish will be done by market forces: where will the population feel it is better to live — amid the ruins under Hamas boots, or in a rehabilitated area with an Emirati-funded school and a trailer home for each family?
The Americans believe this is a temporary situation, and are convinced that Hamas will be disarmed soon. Israel, of course, is much more skeptical. In a recent meeting, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir made a request of the Americans: Explain to me please. Your multinational force, with a few battalions, enters a tunnel. Hamas operatives are armed there. How exactly does this disarm Hamas? Who exactly will hand over the weapons? And what if they don’t?
You didn’t believe the first phase would happen, the Americans said, believe that the second will happen too. Have a little faith, the Jews with an American flag on their lapel told the Jews with an Israeli flag.
3/3
Oh, Muslim women, know that a husband guiding you religiously and morally is not a toxic trait but a sign of a responsible husband showing masculinity. Supporting and correcting each other in a good way is not toxic but rather a manifestation of teamwork in righteousness.
"And cooperate in righteousness and piety, but do not cooperate in sin and aggression. And fear Allāh; indeed, Allāh is severe in penalty." (5:2)
May Allah make our spouses source of happiness to us in this life and the hereafter.
May Allah make our spouses source of happiness to us in this life and the hereafter.
May Allah grant us success in this life and the hereafter. Aamiin
🚨 Trump hosted a White House dinner with the world's most powerful tech CEOs.
It wasn’t just talk.
It was announcement after announcement.
Here’s what they revealed — and why it matters (it gets wild): 🧵
It wasn’t just talk.
It was announcement after announcement.
Here’s what they revealed — and why it matters (it gets wild): 🧵
Bill Gates:
AI’s role in global health initiatives.
“We want a doctor for everyone in Africa through AI.”
Praised ongoing work as world-changing.
Discussed disease eradication with Trump.
AI’s role in global health initiatives.
“We want a doctor for everyone in Africa through AI.”
Praised ongoing work as world-changing.
Discussed disease eradication with Trump.
Mark Zuckerberg :
Complimented Trump’s “constructive dialogue” style.
Mentioned previous administration lawsuits targeting tech firms.
Focused on encouraging and supporting American innovation.
Complimented Trump’s “constructive dialogue” style.
Mentioned previous administration lawsuits targeting tech firms.
Focused on encouraging and supporting American innovation.
Ghosts in the Machine
1/
You are watching the most sophisticated psychological and spiritual operation in human history.
The Great Awakening isn’t coming – it’s unfolding right now, in real time, as the storm sweeps across every institution on Earth.
From the courtroom to the newsroom to the global stage – everything you see collapsing was built to fall.
And behind it all are the silent warriors who’ve been helping manifest this awakening from the shadows since well before President Trump’s first term..
Let’s continue… 🧵👇🏼
1/
You are watching the most sophisticated psychological and spiritual operation in human history.
The Great Awakening isn’t coming – it’s unfolding right now, in real time, as the storm sweeps across every institution on Earth.
From the courtroom to the newsroom to the global stage – everything you see collapsing was built to fall.
And behind it all are the silent warriors who’ve been helping manifest this awakening from the shadows since well before President Trump’s first term..
Let’s continue… 🧵👇🏼
2/
When Trump said “The calm before the storm” – it wasn’t a throwaway line.
It was a coded transmission.
Perhaps he was signaling that a military operation was already in motion – one that would expose, dismantle, and replace the old world order without waking the sheep too soon.
The storm is not chaos. It’s controlled demolition.
When Trump said “The calm before the storm” – it wasn’t a throwaway line.
It was a coded transmission.
Perhaps he was signaling that a military operation was already in motion – one that would expose, dismantle, and replace the old world order without waking the sheep too soon.
The storm is not chaos. It’s controlled demolition.
3/
This is why everything feels like a movie.
Actors, optics, and staged events play their part in a psychological war designed to red-pill the masses without collapsing society overnight.
But make no mistake – though it looks like a movie, the consequences and the way society reacts are very real.
This is war – fought with information instead of bullets, and perception instead of bombs.
It’s far better to endure a storm of illusions than a battlefield of destruction.
This is why everything feels like a movie.
Actors, optics, and staged events play their part in a psychological war designed to red-pill the masses without collapsing society overnight.
But make no mistake – though it looks like a movie, the consequences and the way society reacts are very real.
This is war – fought with information instead of bullets, and perception instead of bombs.
It’s far better to endure a storm of illusions than a battlefield of destruction.
Please don’t take false comfort from polls showing that potential US military strikes on Venezuela are unpopular. Why do I say that? Is US public opinion irrelevant because the USA is a dictatorship?
Thread
Thread
Yes the U.S.A is a dictatorship but that doesn’t mean public opinion is completely irrelevant. However the U.S. has shifted to being less interested in “manufacturing consent” for its crimes (agreement with them) and much more about manufacturing fear of opposing them.
But the other thing is that the U.S. wall to wall acceptance - probably even in the public- for the lie that Maduro is a dictator who we should be happy to see Venezuelans overthrow. That dramatically reduces the political costs of military strikes even if they aren’t popular.
Sidelined and waiting for the market to bring back some green? 🟢
These are the times I like to dig in to small caps with long term plans for success.
@MyStandardDotIO is the perfect project to get started with. 🧵👇
#NeverMissOut $MYST @MyStandard_Adam
These are the times I like to dig in to small caps with long term plans for success.
@MyStandardDotIO is the perfect project to get started with. 🧵👇
#NeverMissOut $MYST @MyStandard_Adam
As folks in crypto, we know how important data is.
Currently, everywhere you go your data is collected and sold off or used to entice advertisers.
It’s dangerous to your privacy, leaves you with no control, and is horribly inefficient.
Currently, everywhere you go your data is collected and sold off or used to entice advertisers.
It’s dangerous to your privacy, leaves you with no control, and is horribly inefficient.
MyStandard solves all of those problems.
It makes data easier to use while keeping it more private and secure.
Users retain ownership of their data and monetize that data when they so choose.
With data being a trillion dollar market the sky is the limit.
It makes data easier to use while keeping it more private and secure.
Users retain ownership of their data and monetize that data when they so choose.
With data being a trillion dollar market the sky is the limit.
SitRep - 17/10/25 - Zelensky in the US and Feodosia is cooked
An overview of the daily events in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While Zelensky is preparing his meeting with Trump, satellite images confirmed the oil depot in Feodosia is cooked.
REPOST=appreciated
1/X
An overview of the daily events in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While Zelensky is preparing his meeting with Trump, satellite images confirmed the oil depot in Feodosia is cooked.
REPOST=appreciated
1/X
Missed the latest SitRep?
As usual we start with Russian losses
In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful
As previously agreed, negotiations with the Pakistani side are scheduled to take place today in Doha. In this regard, a high-level delegation of the Islamic Emirate, led by the Honorable Minister of Defense,
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As previously agreed, negotiations with the Pakistani side are scheduled to take place today in Doha. In this regard, a high-level delegation of the Islamic Emirate, led by the Honorable Minister of Defense,
1/5
…Mawlawi Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid, has departed for Doha. However, last night, Pakistani military forces once again conducted airstrikes on civilian areas in Paktika, resulting in the martyrdom and injury of a number of civilians.
2/5
2/5
The Islamic Emirate strongly condemns, in the harshest terms, the repeated crimes of the Pakistani forces and the violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty. Such acts are deemed provocative and are viewed as deliberate attempts to prolong the conflict.
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3/5
❤️ wenn du mit ihnen nicht diskutieren kannst, wenn nur Hass und Hetze in die Tastatur geklopft wird, dann verwirre sie 😉❤️
▶️ "Im Kampf gegen Online-Hassattacken gegen Politiker*innen im Wahlkampf setzt eine niederländische Bürgerinitiative
▶️ "Im Kampf gegen Online-Hassattacken gegen Politiker*innen im Wahlkampf setzt eine niederländische Bürgerinitiative
ein verblüffendes Mittel ein: Die
▶️ "Hätschel-Armee"
(Troetelleger).
‼️Sobald ein Politiker oder eine Politikerin auf den sozialen Medien mit hasserfüllten Botschaften überschüttet wird, werden Bürger*innen alarmiert, um massenhaft positive Nachrichten zu schicken.
▶️ "Hätschel-Armee"
(Troetelleger).
‼️Sobald ein Politiker oder eine Politikerin auf den sozialen Medien mit hasserfüllten Botschaften überschüttet wird, werden Bürger*innen alarmiert, um massenhaft positive Nachrichten zu schicken.
Mehr als 2.000 machen schon mit bei dieser "Hätschel-Armee", sagte Ana Karadarevic von der Initiative der Deutschen Presse-Agentur.
Mit Erfolg, sagen die Initiator*innen:
▶️ "Durch hunderte von positiven Berichten fallen die hasserfüllten nicht mehr auf und können wir sogar
Mit Erfolg, sagen die Initiator*innen:
▶️ "Durch hunderte von positiven Berichten fallen die hasserfüllten nicht mehr auf und können wir sogar