3M

AI, Bayesian, efficient capital allocation, H+ philosophy, complexity theory

[3M @3macro]

#Crypto has the intrinsic value of a joint bank account. When #liquidity is ample, if you put money early you win. If liquidity gets tight as now, if you pull out money early you win. Can this bank account go to #zero? Not absolutely but it can approximate that limit.

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

Central banks' gold holdings gained roughly $3.2 trillion in value from 2018 to 2025, while the actual amount of metal they own rose just 8.5%.

That gap is how Gold quietly overtook US Treasuries as the world's largest reserve asset, and it happened without a single coordinated dollar dump. The market simply marked up the bullion already sitting in sovereign vaults and rewrote the global reserve hierarchy without a vote. But look closer and the real event is not gold beating the dollar. It is actually the reserve crown splitting into three.

The crossover is very real. At the end of 2025, gold was 27% of global official reserves against 22% for US Treasuries and 15% for the euro, per the European Central Bank, the first time gold has outranked Treasuries since 1996.

Then the ECB ran a counterfactual almost nobody quotes anymore. Value that same gold at its end-2023 price and the ranking flips straight back, Treasuries 26%, gold 16%. So this was neither rebellion nor pure accounting.

Four years of the heaviest central bank buying in history built the physical position, more than 1,000+ tonnes a year from 2022 to 2024, and then private investors and ETFs, nearly 2,200+ tonnes of investment demand in 2025 alone, drove the price that crowned it. Policy built the position. Price crowned it.

The drawdown everyone points to uses the wrong baseline. Gold has fallen about 28% from its January record near $5,595, but the ECB snapshot valued it at the end of 2025, near $4,368, making the decline that matters closer to 7%. On a frozen-balance-sheet basis gold would not surrender its lead to Treasuries until roughly $3,560. It sits near $4,000 today. The lead is intact, and that is the signature of a structural repricing, not a spike.

This is what dissolves the de-dollarization headline. The dollar was never doing one job. It was doing three at once, and they are now separating.

Gold has the market-value crown, the largest single reserve asset by worth, with no issuer and no promise to break.

Treasuries keep the liquidity crown, trading at roughly 8 times the daily volume of the London gold market, the asset you can actually mobilize in size in a crisis. And the dollar keeps the network crown, still 57% of disclosed reserves and one side of nearly 90% of all currency trades. Gold cannot invoice trade or clear a swap line. It did not replace the dollar. Gold extracted one of the dollar's jobs.

And that job is permission. A Treasury can be frozen by its issuer. Gold answers to no government, which is precisely why China just bought into gold's worst month since 2008, why Turkey sold 130 tonnes to defend its currency after the Iran strikes, and why Tether, the largest dollar stablecoin, bought over 100 tonnes while staying dollar-based. Dollars to settle. Treasuries to mobilize. Gold for the moment the issuer itself becomes the risk.

The reserve system did not crown a new king. It split the crown.

[Doctor Profit 🇨🇭 @DrProfitCrypto]

$BTC: Report of the Century:

Today I am making one of the biggest announcements since I sold the top in September 2025. I am taking profit on every single crypto short. The Bitcoin short built between $115,000 and $125,000 is closed now with a gigantic gain. The $80,500 short, built between $79,000 and $82,000, is closed with another massive profit. The 100+ altcoin shorts I opened over the last several months are also closed, locking in another enormous win on top. The time of drinking tea is over. Congratulations to everyone who ignored the noise, trusted the framework and followed me from September 2025 until today.

Buying Bitcoin Spot:

For the first time since September 2025, I am buying Bitcoin spot again. Today, I entered at $64,000 for the absolute long term. For the first time since 9 Months I am buying Bitcoin for the long term! It is the beginning of a structured accumulation strategy, and I will execute it with the same discipline that allowed me to sell the top.

The Accumulation Strategy

Everyone who followed my strategy at $115,000–$125,000 remembers exactly how it worked. Every day Bitcoin traded inside that zone, I sold 10% of my spot position and added shorts. I did not care whether BTC was at $116,000, $120,000 or $124,000. Now I am doing the exact same thing in reverse. Every day Bitcoin remains between $54,000 and $64,000, I will buy 5% of my allocated capital in spot Bitcoin. Not 10% this time, but 5%, because I want to spread the accumulation across a wider period! If Bitcoin stays at $62,000, I buy. If it falls to $58,000, I buy. If it drops to $56,000, I buy. If it wicks into $54,000, I become more aggressive. If it returns to $64,000, I still buy. As long as Bitcoin remains inside this zone of 54-64k I am buying every day with 5% of my entire capital limited to 20 days.

The Technical Zone and Sentiment Shift

The legendary weekly MA200 sits in this region and is now being tested from below. Bitcoin already reached the lower section of this area last week. The top of the 2024 consolidation box also aligns with it. More importantly, sentiment has completely flipped. And I need to say, there are more bears, much more bears than bulls outside, and I dislike being one of many. The same people who were screaming for $150,000 at the top are now desperately waiting for $40,000. X is flooded with targets of $50,000, $45,000, $42,000 and $38,000. Retail is once again standing on one side of the boat, convinced the market owes them the perfect entry.

Front-Running the Herd

Since I announced the 50-40k region as my deeper bear-market target, most of crypto X has copied the same narrative. They copied everything, The market is not blind. The market knows retail is sitting in cash waiting below $50,000. They know people are terrified to buy at $64,000 because they have convinced themselves they will receive Bitcoin at $40,000. I am not going to stand behind the herd and beg the market for the same price as everyone else. I am front-running them. And the next that is following is also going to increase the price and so on, and the chain will be continued and those who are waiting for lower can stay there waiting forever.

Just because the four-year cycle worked at the top does not mean it will work at the bottom. Right now, everyone is waiting for September or October as if the market has already programmed the bottom into the calendar. Do you understand how insane that is? Ask anyone when they plan to buy and they will tell you September or October. Ask them why and they will repeat the same answer: because of the four-year cycle. That is the 1+1 herd behavior. What if the real cycle is not exactly four years? What if it is three years and nine or ten months? What if the market bottoms before the date the entire crowd is waiting for? Bulls are waiting, bears are waiting, and everyone is using the same indicator to justify the same timing. That alone shold cause panic to all waiting for the 4 years cycle to happen. Markets do not reward the masses for memorizing a calendar. I am betting against the four-year-cycle bottom. It is not happening. The bottom comes earlier.

The Structural Shift Around Bitcoin

The deeper reason for the change is not technical. It is structural. The environment around Bitcoin is shifting at a speed most people still do not understand. Regulatory clarity, tokenization infrastructure and institutional adoption are all moving forward at the same time, and the legal framework being built right now has the potential to unlock trillions of dollars of institutional capital that has been sitting on the sidelines or parked in the stock market waiting for certainty. Combine that with Coinbase's institutional buildout and BlackRock's fully operational ETF ecosystem, and we are no longer looking at the same Bitcoin market that existed six months ago. The CLARITY Act could go through on August 10 depending on the Senate, and that is not a small event. There is a reason the entire world is now racing to regulate crypto with full speed.

BlackRock, Vanguard, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and the New York Stock Exchange are already inside the DTCC live tokenization pilot. Microsoft shares, SPY, QQQ and US Treasuries are being tested as tokenized securities right now, with the official launch planned for October. Stocks, ETFs and Treasuries are moving on-chain, and the largest institutions in the world are adopting blockchain rails while retail is still debating whether the bear market is over. On top of that, Citadel just invested $400 million directly into https://t.co/R0aEy9w9Rx at a $20 billion valuation. The biggest players are deploying capital now, at scale, before the crowd understands what is happening. The infrastructure is being built directly in front of everyone, and I move my capital when the biggest capital in the world starts moving, not after

In Regards of the Stock Market Crash:

I am keeping every single SP500 short open. Bitcoin and the stock market are not the same trade, and they are not at the same point in their cycle. The crypto bear market began in October 2025 and continued for nine months while the stock market refused to fall. Bitcoin dropped 52% from 125k to 60k. In the same window the SP500 made new all-time highs. Crypto has already been repriced while stocks remain over valued. Therefore there is a very high probability that the Crypto Market will benefit from a Stock Market crash, as profits will move from over valued assets into under valued assets, and in times of Tokenization Hype, Stablecoin talk and the Clarity Act, these funds will very likely move into the Crypto Market.

One More Thing: I called 40-50k as the target and I was clear about it, I called 60k when Bitcoin was at 120k, and at 60k I said 40-50k is coming, But when the entire crowd on X starts waiting for the exact same level, the market almost never delivers it. Six months ago nobody was calling for sub-50k. Today every single account is. That is exactly when the target gets taken off the table. I now believe we will not see 40-50k at all this cycle. The setup that would have delivered that level is dissolving in front of the tokenization revolution, the CLARITY Act, and the biggest capital in the world moving in. Changing my view when the facts change is what a good trader should do. It is exactly why I made massive profits shorting from 120k, and it is why I am accumulating now while others are still waiting for a bottom that will not come the way they want it.

That is why I am buying now. The crowd has become aggressively bearish and the conditions required for a much deeper collapse are beginning to weaken in front of the regulatory and tokenization revolution. I would rather begin building a position before the crowd understands the shift than chase Bitcoin after confirmation at much higher prices. Buy earlier before the mass starts to understand.

[James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy]

Trump’s Pipeline Wars: How Iran’s Gambit Exposed China

War is the continuation of politics by other means and Trump has moved that logic from the battlefield to the barrel.

The pipeline wars are his answer to Iran’s closure of Hormuz: a counter‑offensive that punishes Tehran, exposes China, and pulls Iraq, Syria, and Venezuela toward the American orbit as emerging allies.
Iran’s gambit was revolutionary bravado: slam shut the strait, choke off a third of seaborne oil, and dare America to blink. Iraq’s exports, long 90‑plus percent dependent on Hormuz—collapsed, and Baghdad discovered it was less an energy state than a client of a narrow waterway patrolled by a hostile regime and an American carrier group.

The Strait has been war‑gamed for decades. Trump tried diplomacy first. Now the world is watching what hard power looks like when the simulations go live.

His answer is to treat Hormuz as a flaw, not fate. Epic Fury broke Iran’s ability to escalate; the strategic move is what follows—build around Iran. Push Iraqi barrels toward Turkey’s Ceyhan.

Revive Mediterranean outlets. Bring back the Kirkuk–Baniyas concept: an old 1950s line from Kirkuk to Syria’s port of Baniyas, shuttered by war and neglect, now reborn as a 300,000–700,000 barrel‑per‑day artery with U.S. backing, American firms doing the studies, and sanctions eased just enough to lay steel. Iraq gets cheaper exports and diversification away from both Hormuz and Ceyhan. A post‑Assad Syria stops being a crater and starts being a corridor, earning hundreds of millions in transit fees, plus jobs and infrastructure. In practice, Syria and Iraq are being bound into an American‑centric energy system, precisely how fragile states become durable allies.

The deeper casualty is China. Beijing built its industrial machine on discounted barrels from Iran and Venezuela, moved by shadow fleets through long, vulnerable sea lanes. That is not diversification; it is dependency. Churchill warned that “safety and certainty in oil lie in variety of supply.” China concentrated risk in sanctioned regimes and contested waters, then called it strategy.

Venezuela shows the Trump doctrine at work. For years, Caracas was a major producer, enabler of state‑sponsored terrorism, and a willing ally of China.

The takedown of Nicolás Maduro was a seismic event largely ignored in polite foreign‑policy circles: a hostile petro‑regime toppled without occupation, then flipped into a grudging supplier to U.S. refiners. Oil long routed to China now flows to America, strengthening U.S. energy security and starving Beijing of friendly heavy crude.

This is Hegel’s dialectic in hard assets. Iran’s closure of Hormuz is the thesis. Trump’s strikes, pipelines, and Venezuela turn are the antithesis. The pipeline wars are the synthesis: chokepoints contested, transit states turned into allies, hostile producers pulled into an American system.

In 2026, the map matters again and Trump is redrawing it so America sits on the pipes while Iran and China sit on exposure.

[Milk Road AI @MilkRoadAI]

AI prices are collapsing five times faster than PC prices ever did and if you understand Jevons paradox, that's the most bullish infrastructure chart you'll see all year (Save this).

Goldman Sachs indexed AI intelligence costs against PC prices from each investment cycle's start.

The PC price index took about 1.5 decades to deflate from 100 toward zero while the LLM price index and quality adjusted price to intelligence ratio hit that same near zero point in roughly 3 years.

That is an unprecedented pace of cost deflation for any general purpose technology.

Standard intuition says falling prices shrink a market but intelligence and compute don't behave like gasoline.

They behave like the classic case William Stanley Jevons documented in 1865.

The more efficient steam engines didn't reduce Britain's coal consumption, they increased it because cheaper power unlocked entirely new uses for coal.

That's exactly the mechanism here.

A collapsing cost per unit of AI intelligence doesn't shrink total AI spend but rather multiplies the number of viable use cases, because tasks too expensive to automate at old prices suddenly become profitable at new ones.

This is the same dynamic Jensen Huang points to when he argues cheaper inference increases total compute demand rather than shrinking it.

A model costing one tenth as much per token doesn't lead to one-tenth the spend, it leads to far more total tokens generated, because applications that batch millions of reasoning steps or run continuously in the background only make sense once price falls this far.

The Kimi K3 and Muse Spark efficiency stories from earlier this week are small scale examples of the same principle, cheaper intelligence per unit accelerates the number of parties building on top of it, it doesn't slow the buildout.

So what does this mean for capital allocation?

The takeaway isn't to avoid compute infrastructure because prices are falling but rather to lean into layers that monetize volume, not per unit pricing.

Chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD monetize GPUs sold to run however many tokens the market demands and Jevons paradox says that number keeps rising as price falls.

Neoclouds like Nebius and CoreWeave rent raw capacity by the hour or contracted throughput, so their revenue scales with total usage volume, not any single model's price.

Power and data center operators benefit the same way.

Aggregate electricity demand tracks total compute consumed and more total workloads running in the background means rising physical infrastructure demand even as software layer economics get squeezed toward zero.

The layer genuinely at risk is the model layer itself, specifically labs depending on premium per token markups.

If intelligence costs keep falling toward zero at five times the pace PCs did, any lab protecting wide inference margins is fighting a losing battle against both open source competition and its own hardware getting more efficient every generation.

If you want to learn more about how you can benefit from this, you can come join Milk Road Pro for just a dollar using the link below!

[Futurist | 10x Disruptive Stocks @futurist_lens]

https://t.co/WTeRjEUllB

[MACHINA @MACHINASUMMIT]

@GoogleDeepMind is running the boldest thesis in Physical AI, and Carolina Parada laid it out on the MACHINA stage today.

The mandate is not modest. "Our goal at @GoogleDeepMind is nothing less but to solve AGI in the physical world." Framed differently: "We want to build an AI that can infuse a robot with human level intelligence and physical abilities so that robots can understand the world and reason about it the same way you and I can."
The bottleneck the team is chasing: "The reason robots are not all around us here today is because they cannot handle generalization yet."

The progress they are seeing: "We're now about 93% performance on this test set, and these are real images. They're noisy. They're small. This is from real world examples."

Her close: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it. So I'm incredibly excited to be working in robotics today. This is the best time to be working in robotics."

MACHINA Summit, Europe's Leading Physical AI Event.

Live today in Paris at Station F.

#MACHINA2026 #PhysicalAI #Robotics

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

How to keep AI spend flat while token usage grows exponentially: Not with friction and spend alerts. With better defaults, routing, and caching.

Better Defaults (not Usage Caps) – Engineers can choose any model they want, but defaults matter. We’re experimenting with defaulting to open weight models like GLM 5.2 and Kimi 2.7 through our LLM gateway, while still encouraging engineers to choose the right model for the task. 91% of our employees were never hitting their usage caps, so instead of lowering caps and driving up alerts, we're moving to cheaper defaults. Note that code reviews use a diversity of models, so they can check each other's work.

Better Routing – In our custom harnesses, we preprocess prompts and route to the best model for the job, considering cache hits and model pricing. For instance, you may want a frontier model for planning, but not for execution where they can be overkill. Ultimately, humans shouldn't be choosing models - AI can automate this task.

Better Caching – Cache misses are the easiest way to drive your cost up. All of our requests are cache aware, so we’re reusing a warm cache wherever possible. For example, our cache hit rate went from 5% → 60% in LibreChat once properly implemented.

Keep Context Lean – Start fresh sessions when switching tasks. Scope file context narrowly. Disconnect unused tools. Don't just compact. The goal isn't fewer tokens used, it's fewer tokens wasted.

Better Visibility – Our engineers can use as many tokens as they want, from whatever model they want, but we’ve made usage visible – and the more you spend on AI, the more impact we expect.

The goal isn't to suppress usage. It's to build the infrastructure that makes exponential growth sustainable.

Putting this into practice has cut our AI spend nearly in half, while our token usage continues to grow.

[MACHINA @MACHINASUMMIT]

Two fireside chats. Two views of humanoid robotics right now, delivered on the MACHINA stage today.

Amanda McMaster, Interim CEO of @BostonDynamics , made the deployment case with numbers. "There's actually not another mobile autonomous robot on the planet being used as much as Boston Dynamics. We have somewhere around 2,000,000 inspections per quarter." "We have something north of now of 600 customers over 46 countries." On the D1 platform: "Between the prototype and D1 that was revealed at CES, we simplified the design from eight actuator types in the prototype to two in D1. And we've seen cost savings between 60 to 80%." On the design philosophy: "We don't really want to be encumbered by the idea of what our human body is capable of doing. The idea is to be superhuman."

@jeffcardn , Co-Founder and CEO of @Apptronik , framed the moment historically. "My view is that general purpose robots and humanoid robots in particular are effectively like the personal computer, and if you take that analogy, it feels like we're in the early eighties." On the stakes: "Robots are the space race of our time." On the geopolitics: "China has had a national robotics strategy since 2021. They have more uptake of robots than the rest of the world combined with four times the population, and they have a $138 billion national robotics fund."

Two conversations. One conclusion. The category is no longer waiting to arrive. It is here, at industrial scale.

MACHINA Summit, Europe's Leading Physical AI Event.

Live today in Paris at Station F.

#MACHINA2026 #PhysicalAI #Robotics

[JH @CRUDEOIL231]

Global commodities CTA positioning...

The setup in precious metals is slowly starting to look pretty clean to me. Aside from the positioning rinse, CTAs are aggressively leaning short, and the doom posting about metals on X is hitting a fever pitch.

I’m still hesitating bc the USD rollover is a no-show and the yield curve has run way ahead of itself. That said, I did nibble on a tiny bit of gold recently, and I get the feeling I’ll want to size up sooner rather than later.

Since the structural long-term consensus is firmly to the upside, timing the entry is the whole game—though I don’t know if the tape will give us a gift-wrapped opportunity. Might just have to front-run the turn and sweat it out.

#oott #gold

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

https://t.co/ZNaQtDhoH6

[spacemonkey @spacemnke]

I spent 2 hours of my Saturday reviewing hundreds of charts. These are the setups that stood out and what you should focus on this week.

Small caps are leading. Semiconductors are trying to reclaim leadership. Most of the Magnificent 7 still look tired.

$IWM closed at new highs.
$SMTC may be one of the cleanest setups on the board.
$SPCX enters its first full week as a public company.

Here’s the watchlist and recording:

$SPX: Strong bounce off the 50-day. Reclaimed 7335-7340 and closed above the prior Friday low. Above 7450 opens a move toward 7520. Below 7400 puts pressure back on the market.

$QQQ: Back near the highs. Above 724 keeps momentum intact and opens the door to a retest of all-time highs.

$IWM: One of the strongest charts right now. Closed at new highs around 293 and continues to lead.

$SMH: Semiconductors bounced hard and remain a key leadership group. Watching for continuation higher.

$BTC: Attempting to form a bottom, but still no clear setup. Needs more time.

$MSFT: Failed after the move toward the 200-day. No compelling setup here for now.

$META: Broke below 600 and continues to look vulnerable. Could see further downside if buyers don't step in soon.

$AMZN: Still holding above the 200-day. Watching 243 and 250 for signs of strength.

$AAPL: Clear bear flag developing. Relative weakness remains compared to the broader market.

$NVDA: Struggling below key moving averages. No clean setup at the moment.

$TSLA: Better than most mega caps. Closed near highs Friday. Watching how it behaves alongside $SPCX.

$GOOGL: Lower highs and below key moving averages. Needs a catalyst to regain momentum.

$SPCX: First full week as a public company. Watching the IPO range closely. Above the highs could trigger momentum. Below 150 would be a warning sign.

$ROKU: Huge move on strategic acquisition headlines. Above 150 keeps momentum alive.

$ARM: One of the stronger semiconductor charts. Holding 380 and breaking 385 could trigger another leg higher.

$AXTI: Photonics remains interesting. Watching 104 for continuation.

$INTC: One of the strongest semis on Friday. Above 128 could trigger a meaningful breakout.

$WDC: Filled the gap and recovered well. Watching for continuation above 572.

$SNDK: Excellent relative strength. Needs to reclaim and hold above 2000.

$MU: Lagging behind SNDK. Watching 1000 and 1015 closely.

$AMD: Strong bounce. Holding 500 and reclaiming 510-520 could open a move toward highs.

$NBIS: One of the more interesting setups. Above 240 could trigger fresh momentum.

$QCOM: Double-bottom style setup near range lows. Looking for rotation back toward highs.

CAVA: Quiet recovery underway. Looks capable of making a run toward 100.

$WOLF: Strong relative strength. Above 26.5 remains interesting.

$RL: New highs. Watching 400 hold and continuation above 405.

$AMAT: Clean continuation setup. Watching prior-day highs.

$GS: Improving again. Above 1080 opens the door to 1100.

$JPM: One of the stronger financial setups. Watching 322.

$SMTC: One of my favorite charts right now. Watching 170-173 for a breakout.

$BAC: Quietly approaching new highs.

$CAT: Rotation candidate if money moves away from tech. Watching 920-930.

$C: New highs and one of the strongest bank charts.

$HLT / $MAR: Hotels continue to show strength and sit near highs.

$LRCX: Strong trend remains intact. Watching above 370.

$HOOD: Strong recovery. Watching 95-96 for continuation.

$GE: Constructive hammer candle. Looks capable of making another run at highs.

$MRVL: One of the better semiconductor setups. Above 300 could accelerate quickly.

$UNH: Quiet strength. Watching continuation toward 440-445.

SNOW: Pulling back after a strong run. Needs time to reset.

$RKLB: Space trade cooled significantly after the $SPCX IPO. Needs stabilization.

$ASTS: Similar story. Heavy pullback after a huge run into the IPO.

Overall theme:

The market bounced, but confirmation is still needed.

IWM, semiconductors, memory names, and financials are showing the best relative strength.

Most of the Magnificent 7 continue to lag and remain below key moving averages.

SMTC, INTC, SNDK, NBIS, MRVL, SPCX, and JPM are some of my favorite charts going into next week.

If you like this, then like it ❤️

[Rosemary Kelanic @RKelanic]

A new Brookings analysis finds the Strait of Hormuz closure will *really* bite within 1-2 months:
-by mid-July, temporary price buffers will be exhausted
-once markets figure out buffers are gone, prices could reach $150/barrel

Have to hand it to @robin_j_brooks, a proponent of Trump's blockade, for doing crucial analysis on the timeline for costs hitting the US.

I would add that as the costs of the Hormuz standoff become more apparent and severe, Trump's bargaining leverage vis-a-vis Iran will decrease accordingly.

Better to reach a deal TODAY, when oil prices are still moderate, than try again in 1-2 months when prices -- and Trump's leverage -- will be worse.

https://t.co/IfyW2rktRa

[Mykhailo Rohoza @MykhailoRohoza]

Ukraine has just deployed a battlefield technology that feels like a mix of science fiction and a game of Call of Duty.

According to The Times, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have introduced a new system that radically changes the rules of modern warfare.

A single operator can now control an entire swarm of drones in real time, see the battlefield through artificial intelligence, receive instant targeting data, and coordinate strikes with sniper-level precision.

What once required dozens of personnel and hours of planning can now reportedly happen within seconds.

Russian troops are already referring to it as “the Ukrainian digital hell.”

[🇨🇳 Guo Shen 郭深 @GuoShenCN7]

🚨 Do you understand what just happened in the last 3 hours..

> Trump was heading to Bedminster for Don Jr.'s wedding.. his own son's wedding.. and he turned around mid-trip and went straight back to the White House..

> his exact words on Truth Social: "circumstances pertaining to Government, and my love for the United States of America, do not allow me to do so.. I feel it is important for me to remain in Washington, D.C., at the White House during this important period of time.."

> he didn't say what the circumstances are.. nobody is saying what the circumstances are.. the White House isn't saying anything..

> the last time Trump abruptly canceled a Bedminster trip mid-travel it was to personally oversee Ukraine-Russia negotiations.. he didn't explain that one in advance either..

> this is a president who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem after three consecutive presidents signed waivers kicking it down the road.. who ordered the Soleimani strike after years of prior administrations receiving the same intelligence and passing.. who authorized the first operational MOAB strike after 14 years of the weapon sitting unused..

> every single one of those decisions happened quietly.. no advance warning.. just a sudden change in schedule and then the world found out why..

> the Iran truce is still fragile.. the Strait of Hormuz situation is not resolved.. the "important period of time" language is doing a lot of work in that statement..

> he skipped his son's wedding..

every president before him would have gone to the wedding..

all of this.. one afternoon.. one Truth Social post.. zero explanation..

if you're not following me you're finding out about this 48 hours late from someone who read my post..

it's only getting crazier from here..

[Faytuks News @Faytuks]

Iran's population has been cut off from the rest of the world for 84 days or nearly 2,000 hours.

[Anas Alhajji @anasalhajji]

🚨 Two Chinese VLCCs carrying 4 mb of Iraqi oil have crossed the Strait of Hormuz and are now heading straight for the US blockade. If they’re allowed to pass, it means Trump and Xi have quietly agreed to let it happen.

Meanwhile, 4 LNG carriers are on their way to China to deliver US LNG ... so they have a deal!

Map form @Kpler

[Nadim Koteich @NadimKoteich]

Trump announced last night he called off a planned major strike on Iran — at the direct request of MBZ, MBS, and the Emir of Qatar. He says serious negotiations are underway and gave it "two to three days."
The GCC didn't ask Trump to stand down because they trust Iran. They asked because they don't trust Washington is aiming at anything beyond theatricals and smokescreens.
My read: if Iran gives Trump something he can package as victory, to the effect of no nukes, Strait reopened, a deal, the strikes won't come. Trump said it himself: "If we can do that without bombing the hell out of them, I'd be very happy."
But if talks stall in the next 48-72 hours, expect calibrated, optics-first strikes, that are enough for Trump to declare mission accomplished and exit with dignity. No deal. Frozen conflict.
Either way, the GCC is working toward a durable modus vivendi with a chastened, weakened neighbor, all while distancing itself from a war that serves theatrics more than strategy.
This comes at a time Iran is signaling willingness to talk with the region. A weakened Iran is an Iran the Gulf can finally negotiate with on its own terms.
Watch the next three days closely.

[Andrew Gold @AndrewGold_ok]

Britain traded 3.2 million enslaved Africans.
Arabs traded 9.5 million.
Africans traded 12.5 million across the Indian Ocean.

Cancelled Oxford professor @NigelBiggar on why you've only heard about one of those numbers. (Check 1st reply)

[Mark @Mark4XX]

ART BERMAN ON THE BIGGEST BLUNDER IN HISTORY: GEOLOGIST WARNS OF JULY CRUNCH

Nate Hagens welcomes petroleum geologist Art Berman back for another truly fascinating conversation. With over 40 years of oil and gas industry experience and deep expertise on US shale plays, Art delivers a sobering deep dive into the data surrounding the Strait of Hormuz closure. What he reveals about impending shortages, system risks, and the true scale of this conflict will change how you see the months ahead.

THE SCALE OF THE CRISIS
➡️ Roughly 21 million barrels per day of oil and refined products normally flow through Hormuz — exactly what the United States consumes daily.
➡️ As of now pretty close to zero is getting through, with only Iranian oil moving at all.
➡️ That leaves about 11 to 12 million barrels offline — roughly 11% of global supply suddenly gone.

WORSE THAN THE 1970s SHOCKS
➡️ The rate of loss is up to 100 times greater than the 1979 Iranian Revolution shock when normalized for daily impact.
➡️ Leads and lags mean the US has not felt the full pinch yet but places like East Asia and Africa already have.
➡️ Strategic reserves are being drawn down at the maximum physical rate of about 2 million barrels per day.

WHY JULY LOOKS BRUTAL
➡️ Even if peace breaks out tomorrow, hundreds of tankers parked inside Hormuz will take 2 to 3 months to reach destinations.
➡️ Production shut-ins, mines in the strait, insurance issues, and repositioning delays all add months more.
➡️ By July gasoline and especially diesel prices will reach levels where many people simply cannot afford to fill their tanks.

THE DIESEL HEART ATTACK
➡️ Diesel powers ships, trains, trucks, farms, mining — basically the entire global economy.
➡️ Spot prices in places like Singapore have already hit the equivalent of $210 per barrel.
➡️ Higher diesel costs cascade into everything you buy, from groceries to delivered goods.

THE US OIL ILLUSION
➡️ America is a net energy exporter on paper but remains a significant net importer of crude oil.
➡️ We export light shale oil ideal for gasoline but must import heavy oil to make enough diesel and jet fuel.
➡️ Our complex refineries are specifically designed around this mix — there is no quick fix.

THE REFINERY SQUEEZE
➡️ Physical oil is trading at $140–$160 per barrel while futures sit much lower.
➡️ Refineries need strong margins to operate profitably at these prices.
➡️ If margins collapse, throughput will be cut, making shortages even worse regardless of crude availability.

PEAK MATERIALS REALITY
➡️ Steel, cement and fertilizer production have already been declining for years.
➡️ Plastics are flattening.
➡️ These four pillars support modern civilization — their peak means we were already slowing before Hormuz.

THE RENEWABLES LIMIT
➡️ Solar panels, wind turbines and EVs still require massive steel, plastics and concrete.
➡️ Critical minerals are overwhelmingly controlled by China.
➡️ We are simply trading Persian Gulf dependence for Chinese dependence.

THE BOTTOM LINE
Art Berman and Nate Hagens lay out why this conflict represents the biggest military, geopolitical, and economic blunder in modern history — driven by energy blindness and a failure to grasp system implications.
Even in the best case we are screwed through the rest of the year no matter what happens next.

HT: YouTube Nate Hagens @aeberman12 @NJHagens

#TheGreatSimplification #ArtBerman #HormuzCrisis #OilShortage #DieselCrunch #EnergyBlunder #GreatSimplification

[Jason Brodsky @JasonMBrodsky]

The next time you hear commentators talking about "strategic failure," it's worth reading @CENTCOM's Commander testimony today.

Some excerpts:

"In less than 40 days of major combat operations, USCENTCOM forces systematically dismantled what #Iran spent four decades and tens of billions of dollars building."

"The capabilities on which the regime relied to threaten our forces, coerce our partners, and project power across the region have been substantially degraded. Combined with the damage Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER inflicted on Iran’s nuclear program, USCENTCOM assesses that Iran can no longer project power across the region, nor pose the persistent threat to the United States or our partners that it did prior to Operation EPIC FURY."

"Iran can no longer reliably arm or resupply Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, or militia groups in Iraq with advanced weapons...This dynamic presents an opportunity for a generational shift in the regional balance of power."

"We damaged or destroyed over 85 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile, drone, and naval defense industrial base. More than 1,450 strikes on weapons manufacturing facilities set the regime’s ability to build and stockpile ballistic missiles and long-range drones back by years. The factories and technical workforce that produced Iran’s ballistic missiles, long-range attack drones, and naval platforms have been degraded to the point that Iran cannot replace its lost capabilities in the near term."

"In the air domain, Iran’s air and air defense forces are functionally and operationally irrelevant. Before OEF, the Iranian Air Force flew between 30 and 100 sorties each day. Today that number is zero. We destroyed or rendered non-mission-capable Iran’s fixed-wing airfields, hangars, fuel storage, and munitions stockpiles, and we knocked out 82 percent of its air defense missile systems along with the radar and command architecture that tied them together."

"At sea, we destroyed 161 vessels in total across 16 classes of warships, effectively crippling the regime’s ability to operate. We eliminated more than 90 percent of Iran’s once-massive inventory of over 8,000 naval mines, with more than 700 airstrikes on Iranian naval mine targets. In sum, Iran’s navy can no longer claim to be a maritime power, and it cannot project into the Gulf of Oman or the Indian Ocean."

"The second-order effects of OEF are significant. More than 2,000 strikes against Iran’s command-andcontrol structures created leadership vacuums, paralysis, and internal confusion. We have seen reporting of desertions, personnel shortages, and signs of regime desperation in their attempts to compel discipline through arrest and execution."

"In short: in 38 days, we rolled back 40 years of Iranian military investment." https://t.co/eAlIBmKgKT