Freyr Ólafsson

For software freedom. Into politics, especially the cross-section of human rights, culture and technology. I enjoy RPG's.
Mastodon: @[email protected]

[Domhnall (Cogito) @CogitoEdu]

Ban Ki-moon, then secretary-general of the United Nations, commented on how, in his visits to some of the most forgotten areas of the world, there was a common factor: the presence of Cuban doctors.

“They are always the first to arrive and the last to leave.”

[Ollie Vargas @Ollie_Vargas_]

Rural workers in Bolivia have seized an oil field in the Santa Cruz region and halted all production, as part of the general strike against neoliberalism.

The site, in the Santa Rosa del Sara municipality, is now fully offline.

[Freyr Ólafsson @gnarlin2]

@DaniMayakovski I wonder if anyone would do something if Israel invaded Turkey or the whole of Egypt, including Cairo? Just how far will they be allowed to go before anyone does anything?

[Jash Salgado @jashsalg]

@DaniMayakovski

[Daniel Mayakovski @DaniMayakovski]

"Soy de las Naciones Unidas y vine del Líbano hace 2 semanas, como nadie hizo nada en Gaza, Israel está haciendo lo mismo en Líbano, no han dejado ni un pueblo en pie. 3 compañeros mios fueron asesinados y a nuestro gobierno le importa una mierda".

Un trabajador de la ONU en Canadá, denuncia el genocidio de "Israel" en Líbano y Gaza mientras enfrenta a la policía canadiense que reprime a los manifestantes que protestan contra los sionistas en las calles.

[Freyr Ólafsson @gnarlin2]

@Pirat_Nation I get the feeling that there are rats in the commission who are fouling the nest.

[Volcaholic 🌋 @volcaholic1]

At a time when ocean temperatures are smashing records and scientists are still trying to understand how fast the system is shifting under climate change, they are talking about scrapping a 368 million dollar early warning network that has ALREADY BEEN PAID FOR by tax payers.

This is not just a few sensors in the sea. It is a network of ~900 instruments measuring temperature, currents, carbon, chemistry and ecosystem change. It was designed to deliver long term data over decades.

This would effectively end key long running records and that matters because ocean data only becomes powerful over time. You cannot rebuild a continuous climate record once it is interrupted.

[sarah @sahouraxo]

Israel just carried out another horrific massacre in South Lebanon.

Dropping massive bombs near Jabal Amel Hospital in Tyre — wiping out 3 apartment blocks full of civilians.

People are still buried under the rubble.

This is an American-backed, American-funded genocide.

[Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa]

Israel is explicitly warning Christian residents in southern Lebanon not to welcome Muslim residents among them, threatening to bomb Christian neighborhoods.

Israel is now searching for Muslims hiding in the attics of Christians. It’s not 1944. Read that again.

The goal isn't military. It's destabilizing social stability in Lebanon.

[Daniel Mayakovski @DaniMayakovski]

Vean como se ve la lucha popular de los pueblos indígenas de Bolivia, que han llenado de barricadas el pais para proteger sus recursos naturales y evitar que el régimen de Rodrigo Paz los entregue a Trump y a EEUU.

Por lo que sea, esta lucha del pueblo boliviano no la enseñan en TV, vaya a ser que tomen ejemplo en otros países y luchen por el futuro de su tierra, expulsando a la lacra imperialista y fascista del pais.

[Wyatt Reed @wyattreed13]

BREAKING: Israel just carried out a massacre in Tyre, completely demolishing three buildings — where many remain trapped inside — and wrecking the Jabal Amel hospital.

Exact casualty figures unknown but thought to be very serious.

More footage below

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

I will soon be introducing a bill to give the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America.

This would guarantee that the trillions created by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — and block oligarch decisions that harm the American people.

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Graham Platner: “We should never tax someone into poverty. We should also still raise taxes on billionaires and corporations. Bezos wants us to think if you raise his individual taxes, that money isn’t going to pay for all the things you want. That’s why we’re not raising it just on you. We’re raising it on all 930 billionaires in the US. It’s why we’re also not just going after your income, but the wealth as well. The wealth they sit on, the wealth they never actually bring into the real world so they never pay capital gains on it, but they borrow against it so they can have liquidity. Of course Jeff Bezos is gonna tell us if we raise his taxes things won’t get better. He doesn’t want us to raise his taxes. He’s a greedy person. That makes perfect sense to me that he would say that. He’s just entirely wrong and self-serving”

[Freyr Ólafsson @gnarlin2]

Ensh*ttification Isn't An Accident. It's The Whole Point. https://t.co/SpHSkcptqt via @YouTube

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

It's virtual PC's that you have to rent from these guys for extortionate prices after they have made normal PC's unaffordable.

If you haven't guessed yet.

[Middle East Eye @MiddleEastEye]

“What really hurts them is the suburbs. We need to target them, flatten them and completely destroy them.”

Far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir called on the army to “flatten” Beirut's suburbs “to the ground”, a direct incitement to mass civilian destruction.

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Israel destroys 2000 year old priceless castle to further it's illegal invasion and ethnic cleansing.

Is the real headline, but of course the BBC gets its headlines straight from Tel Aviv.

[Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism @beyond_capital]

We should be a lot more like the Roman commoners!

[redpillbot @redpillb0t]

They won't let you win.

[Bull Theory @BullTheoryio]

🚨Michael Burry just said Elon Musk and Nvidia's deal is built on fake numbers.

Burry published a detailed breakdown calling the entire structure "Fugazi", his word for fake.

He is alleging that billions of dollars in Nvidia chips are being hidden off balance sheets, and that American retirees are unknowingly funding the whole thing.

Nvidia, the world's largest AI chip company sold $5.4 billion worth of its most advanced GPUs, the GB200, to a company called Valor.

Valor is not a real operating business. It is a special purpose vehicle, a shell company created specifically to hold these chips and nothing else. Nvidia also invested $1.9 billion of its own money directly into Valor on top of the sale.

Those 100,000+ chips are now physically inside xAI's data center. xAI is Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, the one that builds Grok. xAI is using every single one of those chips right now to run its AI models.

But here is what Burry is flagging.

Neither Nvidia nor xAI owns those chips on paper. Valor, the shell company holds legal title. That means $5.4 billion in GPU assets do not show up on Nvidia's balance sheet as inventory.

They do not show up on xAI's balance sheet as assets. They are legally invisible to both companies.

Nvidia gets to book the $5.4 billion as a completed sale and record it as revenue. xAI gets full use of the chips without owning them. And the risk disappears into a shell company in the middle.

Now here is where American retirees enter the picture.

Valor needed $3.5 billion in debt to fund this structure. Apollo provided it. Apollo is one of the largest asset managers on earth with $1.03 trillion under management and $834 billion specifically in private credit.

Apollo raised the $3.5 billion, packaged it into debt securities, and sold those securities to Athene.

Athene is Apollo's own insurance company. It sells fixed and indexed annuities, retirement savings products, to ordinary Americans.

When a retiree buys an Athene annuity, they believe their money is sitting in safe, stable investments. That money is now inside a structure funding Elon Musk's AI data center.

The numbers inside Athene are most alarming.

Athene holds $74.2 billion in reserves. It has moved $217 billion in assets into a captive insurer based in Bermuda, meaning those assets sit outside normal US insurance regulation and oversight.

Of the entire portfolio, 34.7%, equal to $103 billion, is classified as Level 3 assets.

Level 3 is an accounting classification that means there is no observable market price for these assets. No outside party can independently verify what they are actually worth.

The leverage sitting on top of those unpriced assets is 16 times.

Burry's says:
Every step of this structure is technically legal and publicly disclosed. But the entire thing was deliberately engineered across 8 to 12 steps to move credit risk off balance sheets and away from any market pricing.

- Nvidia books the revenue.
- Apollo collects the fees.
- xAI gets the computing power.
- And retirees sitting at the bottom of a 16x leveraged Bermuda insurance structure, holding $103 billion in assets with no market price carry the risk without knowing it exists.