Alastair Woodward

[James Turk @FGMR]

I recommend watching this video by @JayMartinBC with his clear explanation of the implications for Jul 24 when #China stops #PaperGold trading & moves purchases into physical #gold.

[Izabella Kaminska @izakaminska]

This interview is phenomenal. Commendations to @KonstantinKisin @triggerpod @francisjfoster

There’s so much one could say about it. But the chef’s kiss comes in the last few minutes, when Alastair Campbell inadvertently reveals that he doesn’t understand the difference between net energy loss and net energy gain, and has no interest in learning the difference either.

The interview is also an inadvertent masterclass in the tricks of the narrative control trade, particularly the art of defaulting to dismissiveness (eye rolling, sighing, faux exasperation and moral superiority signalling) to shut down entirely reasonable lines of questioning and inconvenient truths when they threaten to unravel one’s position.

Campbell repeatedly deploys these tactics, like the master practitioner of persuasive dark arts that he is. In fact, he channels dismissiveness as though it’s a secret superpower that only he possesses: as if to suggest that if he can make a question seem beneath him, perhaps the audience will conclude it’s beneath them too.

The spell, however, has almost no effect on Konstantin and Francis, both of whom consistently outmatch him by appealing to something even more powerful: even more superior reasonableness. They refuse to be baited, refuse to mirror his theatrics, and simply keep returning to the substance of the argument.

Campbell doesn’t seem to clock that his secret weapon has turned into a liability until it’s way too late.

Amazing to watch, whatever your politics are.
https://t.co/GP7CBzgnsX

[Vukasin Pekovic @VukasinPekovic]

#mintwit The umpteenth example of why the instrument should effectively be banned/marginalized

[Kingfisher Metals Corp. @Kingfisher_KFR]

The final stop of this year's target tour is Rainbow.

This till-filled bowl is a soil sampling nightmare, but keen-eyed prospectors over 15 years ago discovered outcropping sheeted magnetite-chalcopyrite-quartz veining amidst the sea of transported material.

In 2011, the first-ever drill test intercepted 0.76 g/t Au over 91.4 m from surface, but limited follow-up failed to replicate the result.

Now armed with fresh data - detailed mapping, airborne EM and, critically, an IP survey - $KFR.V believes that Rainbow is drill-ready.

Rainbow marks the end of this year's tour, but it is far from the last prospect in our pipeline.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for updates from the 2026 field program at the HWY 37 and Forrest Kerr Projects here: https://t.co/kzGjN44xWt

#KingfisherMetals #Exploration #GoldenTriangle | @DPGEO

[Izabella Kaminska @izakaminska]

Just getting my head round OpenUSD.

But it feels very much like the part of the plot where Stringer Bell (aka Visa/Mastercard) decides he wants peace, not war because fighting over street corners (aka with fintechs and stablecoins for yields) is bad for business.

Together with Proposition Joe (fintechs and Paxos), he then creates the New Day Co-Op, where rival dealers share access to high-quality heroin and agree to resolve disputes without violence on the basis that everyone makes more money if they stop trying to kill each other.

Thus a new elite rentier class is born.

Of course, the new arrangement also demands that Marlo (aka Circle/Tether) retires gracefully. He’s allowed to keep his spoils providing he stays out of the game. Which of course he doesn’t.

[Dustin Perry @DPGEO]

Working in the Golden Triangle affords us amazing access to skilled contractors such as P&R. The companies we use also have Indigenous ownership (Tahltan) which strengthens our stakeholder relationships.

It might look expensive drilling with helicopters in the mountains but when you factor in the benefits of the critical metal charity flow through premiums that we take advantage of, drilling here really isn't any more expensive than in Nevada, Idaho, or Arizona.

Take a conservative (high) estimate of $1000 per meter, divide by 1.5 (we raised at 1.6 delta), and then divide by a conservative USD/CAD exchange rate of 1.3. You get ~$500m USD per meter.

[Kingfisher Metals Corp. @Kingfisher_KFR]

Kingfisher Metals Confirms Early Jurassic Porphyry Mineralization Across Hank-Mary District, a Fertile Window Between Mitchell Cu-Au and Brucejack Au-Ag Deposits

🔗 Read the full press release at: https://t.co/H3kXMxb1CF

$KFR.V | $KGFMF | #KingfisherMetals #Exploration #Mining #GoldenTriangle #BCMinEx

[fred hickey @htsfhickey]

In recent weeks, how many times have you heard from Wall St. talking heads that the essentially closed Strait of Hormuz, soaring energy prices (on top of already climbing inflation), shortages (examples: jet fuel in Asia & Europe, nat. gas, fertilizer, helium, Sulphur etc.) don't matter because the soaring stock market is "all about earnings"?

In my case, I can't count the number of times I've heard or read it (so many). Earnings growth is Wall Street's justification for pushing up stock prices to record highs.

However, that argument is mostly BOGUS.

According to Deutsche Bank analysis released this week, the Q1 earnings growth for the S&P 500 is projected at 19% and Micron and Nvidia alone are driving over 50% of that total growth. That number has received some notice in the financial media.

But nowhere do I hear that there's a gigantic timing mismatch between what Nvidia and Micron report as earnings in Q1 and what their customers (mostly hyperscalers) report. Nvidia & Micron's semiconductor sales are reported currently, much of which immediately flows to their bottom lines as earnings (especially with their inflated margins due to shortages). Yet the hyperscalers' capex costs for their datacenter buildouts are mostly put on the balance sheet (inventories, property, plant & equipment) and do not subtract from their bottom lines until the datacenters are put into use. And even then, the costs are spread out over several years into the future (as depreciation).

But Nvidia & Micron are not the only stocks in the S&P 500 whose current earnings are benefitting from the great hyperscaler datacenter buildout. What about the skyrocketing earnings from SanDisk, Western Digital, and Seagate - as well as other beneficiaries such as Broadcom, Cisco Systems (networking equipment) and Dell (computer servers used in datacenters)?

I asked AI (Gemini) to include those names and here's the answer:
"The "Extended AI Infrastructure" Group: When adding Broadcom (which recently reported 29% revenue growth), Dell, and the storage players (Western Digital/Seagate), this expanded group of eight companies accounts for approximately 68% to 72% of the index's total year-over-year EPS increase."

"The tech sector as a whole is expected to grow earnings by 44% to 45% this quarter, effectively carrying the rest of the market. Without these specific names, the S&P 500's Q1 earnings growth would likely drop from 19% to the low single digits."

So, never mind the question as to whether all this massive AI datacenter spending will ever lead to any decent returns on investments (ROIs). Excluding the earnings from the AI datacenter suppliers (adjusting for the timing mismatch) creates "low single digit" earnings growth for the rest of the S&P 500 index. Does that justify soaring stock prices to record levels in the current unstable global economic environment?
It does not! Investors are caught up in an irrational stock mania/bubble based upon faulty analysis and it will end as all manias do - very badly.

[fred hickey @htsfhickey]

I think the next couple of days will be a major test for the gold market. Assuming stocks decline hard on the disappointing cease fire talk news and oil prices begin climbing again, will gold follow the recent weeks' pattern of falling along with stocks or are long gold positions mostly washed out (as the COT reports and low open interest and daily trading volumes suggest), the correlation breaks and gold resumes its bull market climb to higher heights?

[Dan Carlin @dccommonsense]

And given this morning's nuclear war/"Great Filter" rainbows&unicorns HH-style, breakfast fare tweets...a little Carl Sagan seems appropos😂

[Kobrea Exploration @kbxexploration]

Kobrea Exploration Provides Update on Drill Program at El Perdido Porphyry Copper-Gold-Molybdenum System - Mendoza Province, Argentina

$KBX.CN $KBXFF #juniormining #copper #copperstocks #Argentina #mendoza #drilling

https://t.co/Ob4OzFEvOn

[Rick Rule @RealRickRule]

Canada, Do you want to join the EU?
Can you afford Ottawa and Brussels?

[Izabella Kaminska @izakaminska]

@TheMichaelEvery The people who seem to be outraged at the prospect of America trying to expand its federation model are the same people who applaud the EU doing exactly the same thing way beyond its sphere of influence.

[Izabella Kaminska @izakaminska]

Really recommend this interview between @freddiesayers and energy expert @HelenHet20 where Helen lays out why markets may be wrong in assuming things will return to normal once Iran is neutralised. The chaos may be the strategy.

And whichever way you look it's bad for Europe, which is exposed as incapable of becoming strategically autonomous.

The key points are:

1. The US intentionally benefits from chaos in the Strait of Hormuz because China heavily relies on Persian Gulf oil imports, whereas the US is largely self-sufficient.

2. Artificial intelligence development is incredibly electricity-intensive. By degrading China's energy security, the US directly undermines its primary competitor's ability to succeed in the global AI race.

3. The strategy deliberately aims to make European nations heavily reliant on American liquefied natural gas (LNG) rather than Middle Eastern sources, effectively undermining Europe's push for strategic autonomy and tying them closer to the United States.

4. The real disruption relates to Western shipping insurance companies, like Lloyd's of London, refusing to insure transit through the Persian Gulf after a US attack on an Iranian ship. Although the Trump administration claimed it would step in to provide insurance and military convoys to ease the market, it has taken no meaningful action to do so. Consequently, ships bound for China are forced to operate without Western insurance.

5. The US agenda is to leave Europe to fend for itself in the region since it has little strategic interest in securing the Red Sea or the Suez Canal, as almost none of its own hydrocarbon or trade imports rely on that route.

6. Europe's leaders are trapped: they do not want to rely on an antagonistic Trump administration, they cannot rely on Russia, and they currently lack the unified military power to secure their own energy supply routes.

https://t.co/QJqNPaFH9f

[Spartan Metals Corp @SpartanMetalsCo]

Spartan Metals Acquires the Largest Tungsten Resource* in the United States

Read the full NR: https://t.co/pB1XK2QZfv

#Tungsten #CriticalMinerals $W $W.v $SPRMF #J03

*United States Geological Survey – Tungsten Resources in the US (Ver. 2.0 August 2020) https://t.co/AEOkaNkzvk

[Anas Alhajji @anasalhajji]

"The last thing Iran would want is a VLCC loaded with 2 million barrels of oil exploding or spilling near its shores. Iran itself relies on more than 65 desalination plants along the Gulf coast, though they supply only a small fraction of its water needs."

"More critically, neighboring Gulf countries—home to large Shia populations near coastal areas—depend heavily on hundreds desalination facilities. These plants provide the vast majority of drinking water in places like Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and even Oman. A major oil spill could contaminate intakes and cripple water supplies across the region, affecting millions—including many Shia communities. Either the parties involved have lost all sense of self-preservation, or the media reports are inaccurate/misrepresented."

Sea mines are simple weapons that could give Iran outsize power to wreak havoc with the global economy https://t.co/Cq86PsZnTl via @WSJ

[Martin C Holland @MartinCHolland1]

Transformational Copper mine acquisition by @CobreLimited $CBE
Godspeed!

[STRATA INVESTMENT HOLDINGS PLC @strataplc]

$SRT has backed $CBE since 2019 — a relationship that began when Martin C Holland & Michael D McNeilly were introduced by Terry Grammer (pictured).

Now CBE has raised $60m to acquire up to 51% of the producing Sierra Atacama #copper project in Chile.
🔗https://t.co/f93ICDqrdD

[Heliostar Metals Ltd @HeliostarMetals]

The San Agustin leadership team celebrating the first pour, and a close up of the first gold bar!

[Izabella Kaminska @izakaminska]

I think we are nearing some sort of information collapse point. Like a babel moment.

To the average normie nothing currently makes sense. Everything feels contradictory. On one side there is the advance of authoritarians who want to up surveillance and censorship, cancel democracy or simply sack Rome. On the other side there��s the corruption and lies of the old system, and the very real sense that democracy wasn’t real to begin with. Also, that social mobility was always tied to some form of control. Technocratic or criminal.

If not that it’s a blend of the two. Everything may have been corrupt.

People are running with whatever narrative they want because the chaos is so profound, they can make almost any theory stick by simply zoning out the contradictions and selectively cherry picking the facts that fit their agenda. Being objective right now is really hard because everything feels so tribal.

It’s as if Western society is being induced into a mass disassociated state.

Perhaps the truth is that everyone is compromised to a lesser or greater degree. There are no heroes. There are no enemies. All sides are just a mirror of each.
Maybe the innocent haven’t yet faced a moment of equal temptation. Their potential to become great villains is still outstanding. On the other hand there are probably many “villains” whose desire to make good on pasts sins is very real but impossible to realize. Who is a future villain vs who is a future saint.

It’s worth remembering what happened when the secrets of the old regime in the USSR spilled out. How the normies of Russia had to contend with the reality that Stalin was no hero. The result was epistemic shock.

This is our glasnost moment.

Kpop Demon Hunters seems the right ref weirdly enough. It’s as if the Honmoon shield really is breaking down and the barrier between the shadows and the light is eroding.

I think the only way to process the chaos is to understand there is no “them”. And there is no “us”. There’s only personal integrity. And possibly lustration.