Opinions on property, people, investing & everything else. Novice Crypto Native. Progress is a mindset. Blocked by Teflons ✌️ PS - my likes /RTs are bookmarks.
Things the recovery industry will not tell you:
1. The drug worked. That is why people use it. Not weakness. Not moral failure.
A neurological event so complete and persuasive that any honest account of addiction has to start there.
The problem is not that the drug fails. The problem is that what it does is unrepeatable, and you will burn your entire life to the ground trying to get back to a place that no longer exists.
2. Shame is not guilt. Guilt says I did something bad. Shame says I am something bad. Guilt is appropriate. Shame is a cell with no windows. Most people use the words interchangeably. That mistake is lethal.
3. You cannot shame someone who has already named the thing you are holding over them. Say it first. Say it in plain light. The weapon drops.
4. Guilt can coexist with self-respect. Shame cannot. You can hold the damage and the dignity at the same time. I know because I live there.
5. Radical honesty does not give you back who you were. It hands you the clean slate of who you always wanted to be. The mask comes off. The cartoon other people drew of you stays on the page.
6. Nobody gets clean on a winning streak.
7. You have to be almost self-delusional in your forgiveness of yourself. (Go watch Chase Hughes)
8. The greatest sin was not the chaos. It was the absence. Being unavailable to the people who needed you.
9. Sustainable recovery starts with one thing: honesty with yourself. If you love an addict and want to help, that is the only door in.
10. I am only an expert on my recovery. Nobody is an expert on anyone else’s.
In what will certainly become one of the most fundamental speeches of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV told the Spanish Parliament, before receiving a 7-minute standing ovation: "The defense of human life is neither a partisan issue nor a confessional interest: it is a goal of civilization."
"If life ceases to be recognized as a fundamental value, what future can our societies have?" he said, speaking to a gathering of politicians, many supporting abortion and euthanasia.
"Can a community that casts into the shadows the unborn child, the elderly, the sick, those who suffer in silence, or those who depend entirely on the care of others be called fully just?"
"Every human life must be recognized and safeguarded from conception to its natural end, in every circumstance of its existence. When this certainty is obscured, the most vulnerable are the first victims, and the law loses its deepest meaning: to serve and protect every person."
"For this reason, the moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to accompany, protect and love those lives that are most fragile," he said, repeating what John Paul II emphasized decades ago.
Starting his speech he commented that Church's is the "message offered in the spirit of service to the human person."
"When the Church addresses anything concerning public life, she does so while respecting the proper mission of institutions and the legitimate responsibility of those who have received the mandate to legislate," Pope Leo said, emphasizing "the Church offers a reflection born of the desire to serve the common good."
He hailed Spain as country that "has known how to view the human being as more than just a cog in the social, economic or political order. It has recognized the human being as a creature open to truth, endowed with freedom, and driven by a thirst for eternity that no temporal reality can quench -- in a word, as someone whose dignity takes precedence over all utility and to whose service legislative action is subject."
He said it was Catholic orders that "helped to shape a legal and moral consciousness capable of remembering that authority always entails responsibility and that every human being must be recognized as a subject of rights and duties."
"That aspiration continues to resonate today: that dignity, justice and the common good should be the measure of social relations, both at the national and international levels."
Referring multiple times to his "Magnifica Humanitas" encyclical, he said: "When the common good ceases to be a shared horizon, public action runs the risk of fragmenting into partial interests, incapable of safeguarding what belongs to all."
"In this context, the family — the primary human reality and the natural foundation of the community — takes on particular importance," Pope Leo said.
"The family will always be the first school of humanity, where one learns, before anywhere else, the basic grammar of living together: welcoming life, caring for others, forgiving, serving and belonging."
"Human life can never be treated as a commodity," the pope said.
"A law does not attain its true greatness merely by having been formally enacted; it attains it when, in addition to being valid in form, it can stand before the dignity of the person and pass that test without shame."
"I invite you, then, to lift your gaze to the world around you, not to turn away from reality, but to remember that every decision by public authorities affects real people, especially those who have less power to make their voices heard."
"The expanse of one’s vision consists precisely in looking more deeply at what is at stake in every public decision. This is why, alongside technical solutions and legal reforms, a moral renewal is also needed."
Video: Vatican Media
(fragment of speech follows)
Here is a China story with giant global implications.
Car sales in the world's largest market have been dropping for 8 straight months.
In May they plunged 22% YoY. That's a 400,000 car tank in a single month.
Chinese automakers have reacted by doubling down on exports to markets worldwide. Gotta keep the factories running.
2022: 3.1M
2023: 4.9M
2024: 5.8M
2025: 8.3M
2026: 12M (f)
Chinese cars are coming to your neighborhood, ravaging legacy automakers in Australia, the UK, Spain, Mexico and Brazil.
https://t.co/zJrjmoX5cO
This isn’t even remotely true. $AMZN went public in 1997 at a $450M valuation, or 3x revenues. $GOOGL went public in 2004 at a $23B valuation and at 7x revenues. $META had a $104B valuation in 2012 at 20x revenues(and immediately sold off almost 50%). SpaceX dwarfs these numbers.
This is an actual page on the White House web site. It reads like something written about a third world dictator. So embarrassing. I have not seen any branch of the federal government sink this low in my lifetime.
I see your profile picture. That’s Johnny Cash. My hero too. Arrested seven times. Smuggled 668 amphetamines across the Mexican border in 1965. Took every drug there was and drank like I did. Cheated on his first wife. Slept with more woman than I ever did. Hit bottom in a cave in Tennessee in 1968 trying to crawl off and die. And then he got up. He got clean. He spent the rest of his life singing for prisoners and addicts and the people the country threw away because he knew he was one of them.
That was the whole point of the Man in Black. He wore it for the poor and the beaten down. He wore it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime. He wore it for the ones who never heard a word of Jesus. He wore it for the addicted and the dying. He wore it as a standing witness that no one is past saving.
You picked his picture. You did not pick his message. Try listening to the words.
Institutional Research https://t.co/zF8UE9i99J
This chart was included in this morning's institutional report. The (S&P Technology Select Sector SPDR) is displaying topping characteristics. It has gapped lower this morning, creating an Island Reversal pattern..
When Samsung’s founder declared in Tokyo that Samsung would enter the semiconductor business, Intel in the United States mocked Samsung as “delusional,” while Japan’s Mitsubishi reportedly published a report titled “Five Reasons Samsung Cannot Succeed in the Semiconductor Business.”
Fortunately, Korea today is not publishing reports like “Why China Cannot Catch Up with Korean Semiconductors.” Instead, Korea remains highly vigilant. In other words, Korea is determined not to repeat Japan’s mistake.
Still, I am anxious. China’s technological progress is frightening, but what scares me even more is imagining Korea’s future without semiconductors.
Samsung and SK Hynix already account for more than 50% of the Korean stock market.
The corporate taxes paid by Samsung and SK Hynix alone will exceed one-quarter of Korea’s total tax revenue in 2026.
If Korea loses semiconductors to China, Korea will become Finland without Nokia — or Detroit.
No fever like football fever
$CDRO ready to fly into the nets! Remarkable strength going into the most beautiful game's world cup.
#FIFAFever@FIFAWorldCup ⚽️⚽️⚽️
$AMD CIO on concerns around AI token budgets:
"If you take a very conservative estimate of an employee you have trained to leverage AI agents and spends $200 a week through tokens, if you multiply that, it's about $10,000 a year if you take a 50-week. For 40,000 employees, that's about $400 million. For 90,000 employees, you're talking about $900 million. That line item never existed a few years back."