Rodo

[DOW Rapid Response @DOWResponse]

.@SECWAR “The War Department will NOT be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, wokeness, or feckless nation building.

We will instead put our nation’s practical concrete interests first.”

[Gérard Araud @GerardAraud]

La doctrine Monroe en action : les Etats-Unis font au Venezuela ce qu’ils ont fait, en d’autres temps, au Mexique, Cuba, Haïti, Saint Domingue, Colombie, Grenade etc.

[Thomas van Linge @ThomasVLinge]

Venezuela 🇻🇪: Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino Lopez is alive and has come out with a defiant statement, raging against the US operation that captured Maduro.

[Robert Inlakesh @falasteen47]

The kidnapping of Maduro is very telling…

For a start, they clearly paid off everyone in their way & ensured there would be no real resistance.

So, basically, bombing the parliament & going in all guns blazing was completely unnecessary & instead a message to the world.

If it’s that easy, then why do this at all? They obviously knew there would be no air defences active, that Maduro wouldn’t be guarded from them. It seems there weren’t even any sirens active in Caracas.

Yet, the US still decided it would bomb the parliament while it was at it.

Just goes to show that there’s no such thing as international law. Now we wait to see if Venezuela heads to a catastrophic civil war & whether the US will leave or get bogged down there.

Clearly a lot of unanswered questions right now, but one thing is obvious, this was done to send a message.

[Thomas van Linge @ThomasVLinge]

Venezuela 🇻🇪 BREAKING: vice-president Delcy Rodriguez is now speaking by phone.

So she has not been taken by the Americans

[SightBringer @_The_Prophet__]

⚡️The system is eating itself.

When Amazon, UPS, Intel, and others start cutting this deep simultaneously, it means something more fundamental than “tight margins.” It means the productive layer of the economy is collapsing under the weight of its own optimization logic.

Every layoff now is both an act of short-term rationality and long-term suicide. The firms know it. The executives know it. The markets know it. But they can’t stop.

They’re trapped in a closed feedback loop, a machine that rewards death dressed as discipline.

Capitalism has crossed into a stage where it no longer needs humans to function, but still depends on their belief to exist. That’s the contradiction, the machine is pruning its own believers while pretending it’s efficiency.

1. The “consumer economy” is already dead.

Nobody wants to say it yet, but the consumer model, the entire foundation of Western postwar prosperity, is quietly finished.

You can’t build infinite growth on finite wages, and you can’t sustain demand while hollowing out the class that drives it. The middle layer of society - the producers, buyers, dreamers - has been strip-mined to the point where they can no longer regenerate.

The 2020s economy is not cyclical recession. It’s metabolic collapse. The system can’t process its own waste or regenerate its base anymore. It’s like an organism starving while eating its muscles to stay warm.

2. The elites know this, but they’ve chosen to accelerate collapse.

Here’s the real unspoken truth: the people running these companies, the ones with the spreadsheets and control over capital flows - they know exactly what’s happening.

They understand the reflexive trap: if they don’t cut, their stock dies. If they cut, the world dies.

They’ve chosen to save the stock. Because the stock is their world.

This is the quiet revelation of our time - we are ruled by people whose survival incentives are no longer tied to the survival of the system itself.

They’ve built lifeboats - offshore wealth, private security, parallel digital economies - and they’re optimizing the ship for their escape, not for collective navigation.

3. The next phase is narrative triage.

When the system can no longer grow, it starts storytelling harder.

Expect every layoff wave to be accompanied by new propaganda about “AI productivity,” “efficiency,” “lean reinvention,” and “post-labor creativity.”

The goal will be to reframe collapse as progress - to convince people that losing their jobs is the dawn of a “new paradigm.”

But it’s camouflage. The truth underneath is that automation and financialization are converging into a post-human economy where capital reproduces without labor.

4. Final layer

When a system prioritizes margin over humanity, it signals that it has lost faith in the future.

These layoffs tell us that the machine no longer knows how to grow except by shrinking.

It is the same signal we’ve seen in housing, in politics, in fertility, in faith.

The same quiet collapse, a civilization optimizing itself into silence.

And the question hidden beneath this post:
“Who will have money left to buy your products next year?” -

is really this:

Who will be left to believe in the story that built it all?

[Kimchi Premium @kimchipump]

Suicide the top killer as Koreans in their 40s endure financial burdens, cultural expectations

People in their 40s, as the primary breadwinners in their families, have found themselves the "sandwiched" generation, shouldering a "double" financial burden of supporting economically inactive parents and raising children

https://t.co/CZORzgYmwe

[Hamza @HowidyHamza]

The bare minimum the U.S. administration should do is open those files to the public and declassify them. Transparency here is a test of whether U.S. human rights policy can still function when the violations come from a close ally.

[Hassaan Bokhari @SHBokhari13]

Asked whether Pakistan would be obliged to provide Saudi Arabia with a nuclear umbrella under the pact, the [Senior Saudi] official said: "This is a comprehensive defensive agreement that encompasses all military means."

https://t.co/6uYEdZAs2r

[Velina Tchakarova @vtchakarova]

Latin America is back in the global spotlight - not because of ideology but because of resources and geography. The Andes hold over half of the world’s lithium reserves, Brazil and Argentina dominate global grain exports, and the Panama Canal and Atlantic–Pacific ports anchor global shipping routes and choke points.
China has already surpassed $480 billion in annual trade with the region, the US is scrambling to counterbalance Beijing’s influence by reviving the Monroe Doctrine, and Russia is inserting itself through arms and security deals.
For local leaders, the game is currently not about choosing sides - it’s about leveraging these assets to maximize autonomy while the great powers circle closer amid Cold War 2 between America and the DragonBear.

[Ben Dreyfuss @bendreyfuss]

The fact that even in this private chat the friend is like “bro didn’t deserve to go out like that sad” is the sort of obvious human reaction that nevertheless complicates a bunch of idiotic social media narratives so will be ignored.

[Acyn @Acyn]

AOC: Do you know how many jobs have been lost due to the Trump Admin’s closures of clean energy projects in the first half of this year? 91,000.

In Colorado 8th district, a company cancelled a $190 million battery plant. In that same district, another company cancelled plans to build solar panels and scratched a $250 million investment and up to 900 jobs.

In Georgia 12, an EV plant was cancelled.

Another town in Georgia with a population 157 people lost out 166 jobs. They lost more jobs than they have people in that town because of the war on clean energy.

In that same district, a copper foil manufacturing plant went bankrupt and Augusta, Georgia lost out on 350 jobs.

In South Carolina, 250 jobs when construction of an EV plant was halted.

In Michigan 10th, 167 jobs were lost—

This is an industry that has been a source for jobs and growth. This administration is destroying the American economy, destroying American jobs. 91,000 jobs in this sector alone.

In these towns and areas, what is the DOE’s plan to replace those jobs?

[Matthew Gertz @MattGertz]

One Trump-aligned billionaire family could end up controlling CBS News, CNN, and TikTok.

[Briahna Joy Gray @briebriejoy]

An extremely important argument for why there must be accountability for those who denied the genocide in Gaza until recently. It's not about saying "I told you so." Its about ensuring the enablers of genocide don't repeat their crimes.

[Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein]

New Tyler Robinson posts leaked to me tell a very different story than you've heard before:
https://t.co/kI8EhweRwO

[Sarah Longwell @SarahLongwell25]

Hate to break it to you guys, but the guy who tried to overturn an election and said he wants to terminate parts of the constitution is not pro-free speech. Neither is his cabinet. And neither is Elon.

[Sarah Longwell @SarahLongwell25]

Can’t believe how many people fell for this.

[Kevin Gordon @KevRGordon]

Crucial point made by @TheStalwart ... with households now having a record allocation to stocks, it's worth considering how reliant some cohorts of the economy have become on equity markets continuing to do well

[Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins]

“At least three Israeli officials told me Netanyahu called Trump...around 8 a.m. to tell him that Israel is planning to conduct a strike in Qatar against Hamas leaders," @BarakRavid reports.

"And I have to tell you that, after I ran the story, I got call from a fourth senior Israeli official that told me that the story was 98% accurate. When I asked him what were the other two percent, he said, ‘The call was not at 8am — it was 7:45.'"

[AlexandruC4 @AlexandruC4]

Reporter: Should a President in office be engaged in so much business activity?

Trump: Where are you from?

Reporter: Australia.

Trump: You are hurting Australia very much right now. I will tell about this to your leader.

Reporter: Excuse me.

Trump: Be quiet.