👻☭

you got to be tough // you got to have style

[👻☭ @redbeatsman]

@nise_yoshimi It’s genuinely been such a joy to play. I’ve had to retry so many encounters but idc bc it’s so expressive in the moment to moment

[Lei Gong @gonglei89]

If you only have time to read one explainer for the current state of global political economy make sure this is the one. You won’t find a more succinct encapsulation for the fulcrum of economic and political forces shaping our contemporary condition in the 21st century.

[Anis Raiss @AnisRaiss]

A 19-year-old Israeli soldier was killed last week by a drone that cost $400.

The IOF admits it has no answer.

On 22 July 2019, a player on Steam asked the developers of SQUAD for two things... a Hezbollah faction and a south Lebanon map.

Six years later that scenario is real at the actual border. Just not in a game.

New piece. The gaming generation behind Hezbollah's FPV revolution.

https://t.co/6k7KA9Khgm

[Carl Zha @CarlZha]

Breaking! The South Korean President just openly criticized Israeli atrocity in Gaza, comparing it to Japanese atrocities committed against Korean civilians in WW2

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

💢 Iran’s new Supreme Leader used a major address on the 40-day anniversary of his father’s death to declare a strategic victory over US-led pressure, and to lay out plans to reshape regional power with Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei:

➤ 1. Declared a unified “Resistance Front,”

▫️“We have not sought war and do not seek it — but we will in no way relinquish our rightful rights, and in this regard we consider the entire Resistance Front as a unified whole.”

▫️He describes Iran and its regional allies, including Lebanon, as a single bloc, decisions will be made - and pressure will be met - collectively.

➤ 2. Claimed a victory and framed it as defeat of Western pressure system

“Today… it can be said that you, the heroic Iranian nation, are the definitive victors. The emergence of the Islamic Republic as a major power and the decline of global arrogance are now visible to all,” he said, portraying the war as proof that years of U.S.-led sanctions, isolation, and military pressure failed to break Iran—and instead accelerated its rise.

➤ 3. Positioned Hormuz as Iran’s counter to sanctions regime

“We will certainly bring the management of the Strait of Hormuz into a new phase,” he said—directly tying Iran’s control over a global oil chokepoint to the same Western sanctions system that has targeted its economy for years. The implication is clear: Iran now holds leverage over the very countries that sought to isolate it.

➤ 4. Called for full reparations and punishment of attackers

▫️“We will certainly demand full reparations for all damages caused, as well as blood money for the martyrs and compensation for the war’s wounded.”

▫️”All must know that, by Almighty God’s will, we definitely won’t allow the criminal aggressors who attacked our country to go unpunished.”

➤ 5. Direct warning to Gulf states aligned with the West

▫️“I say to Iran’s southern neighbors: you are witnessing a miracle. So observe closely, understand matters correctly, stand on the right side, and be distrustful of the false promises of the devils.”

▫️“We’re still waiting for an appropriate response from you, our southern neighbors, so that we may demonstrate our brotherhood and goodwill to you. This will not be realized unless you renounce the Arrogant Powers, who miss no opportunity to humiliate and exploit you.”

➤ 6. Called public mobilization Iran’s weapon

▫️“Your cries in the streets are effective in the outcome of negotiations,” he said.

▫️“What is now essential is the continued presence of the people, just as in the past forty days. This presence is a pillar of Iran’s current strength. Even if negotiations begin, public presence must not diminish. The voices of the people influence negotiations.”

➤ 7. Final Message:

Iran’s leadership is not treating this as the end of a war, but as the beginning of a new phase. Recommendations to the nation:
▫️First, people must support one another amid wartime shortages.
▫️Second, be cautious of enemy-aligned media; either avoid them or treat them with deep suspicion.
▫️Third, though official mourning may end, the determination for justice and revenge for the martyrs must remain alive.

[Bin Xie @bxieus]

Today, Israel carried out airstrikes against the "China-Iran Railway"—marking the first direct attack on the core interests of China's Belt and Road Initiative.

This railway, which opened on June 3, 2025, was constructed with 40 billion RMB funding by China. It was designed to allow Iranian oil to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca, traveling directly to China—thereby saving 20 days in transit time—and serves as a strategic corridor intended to "break through 13 years of U.S. sanctions."

[🅰pocalypsis 🅰pocalypseos 🇷🇺 🇨🇳 🅉 @apocalypseos]

Kuomintang Chairwoman Cheng Li-wen:

“Americans didn’t go to fight for Ukraine, and NATO has not helped Ukraine fight. They just keep giving Ukraine weapons, letting you fight for one, two, three, or four years. The dead are Ukrainians, and Ukraine is destroyed.

Look at the whole of Ukraine, it is scarred, almost flattened. A whole generation of young people has disappeared on the battlefield. Still fighting.

After the war, have you won against Russia? Has Putin stepped down? Has Russia collapsed?

The U.S. led the world to impose the most severe, the most terrifying sanctions in history—economic sanctions. Has Russia’s economy collapsed? It’s been almost four years.

Could it be that Taiwan will become the second Ukraine? Does Taiwan have more land than Ukraine? And more people? Is China’s economic strength smaller than Russia’s? Is China’s military strength weaker than Russia’s? Is the Chinese mainland’s ruling regime more fragile than Putin’s? Or unstable?

After I ask these questions, you will know. Does Taiwan want to be Ukraine?”

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

Israel's bombing of middle and upper class areas of central Beirut is a declaration of total war on Lebanese society, reminiscent of the Israeli bombings of middle class Fatah-centric residential towers in Gaza City at the end of the 2014 Operation Protective Edge that signaled the impending genocide a decade later

Israel is sending the message that all of Lebanon will burn unless it turns on itself and wages civil war with Hezbollah and its support base

The Dahiya Doctrine is now the Lebanon doctrine

This totalistic terror spree is also obviously the first of many ghastly Israeli attempts to destroy a deal with Iran

[Fars News Agency @EnglishFars]

The passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz has been halted following Israel’s attacks on Lebanon

[NASA Earth @NASAEarth]

That's us! 🌍

The Artemis II crew captured beautiful, high-resolution images of our home planet during their journey to the Moon. As @Astro_Christina put it: "You guys look great."

[Deeda Weeda aka DMAN 🇵🇸 @DeemTheDreem]

This exactly what I was getting at the other day about who is subordinate to who (government, capital, military etc) and how that defines a system more than if "markets" are present (they're always present in every system).

[Mehdi (e/λ) @BetterCallMedhi]

while the entire western world has its eyes glued to Iran spending billions on missiles and carrier groups it is quietly losing another war that nobody is talking about and I’m convinced this one will be infinitely more devastating in the long run: the war for talent

I need to start by saying something that a lot of people think privately but are afraid to writ, the west is destroying its credibility in the eyes of the entire world by waging a war in the Middle East on behalf of Israel that the majority of its own populations disapprove of, Europe follows the US like a vassal, Macron makes statements for the cameras while France votes how Washington wants, Germany stays silent, the UK falls in line meanwhile millions of young talented people across the world are watching this & thinking this is no longer my world

there is an entire generation of engineers researchers entrepreneurs between 20/ 35 who refuse to be part of this, who refuse to build their lives in countries whose geopolitical choices disgust them, when China or the UAE or Singapore extends a hand they take it without looking back

the talent migration to China is accelerating way faster than anyone wants to admit, hardware engineers from the Bay Area are settling in Shenzhen, people who spent a decade at Apple/NVIDIA/ Tesla who realize they can execute and iterate 10x faster there for a fraction of the cost, they stay because the ecosystem lets them build real things at a speed the west simply can’t match anymore

I wrote about this in my Shenzhen thread a few weeks ago, I personally lived it and it permanently changed how I see everything, the entire supply chain operates like a living organism where every node learns from every other node, try getting that kind of execution speed anywhere in Europe/ US

China is deploying a systematic strategy to become the largest talent magnet in history, simplified visas for foreign engineers, special economic zones for deeptech startups, massive doctoral scholarships targeting brains from Africa, Latin America & Europe, fast-track naturalization for strategic profiles, meanwhile the US makes the H1-B harder every year and France asks brilliant engineers to prove they deserve to stay with 50 page dossiers every 2y

so let me be clear about the the contrast here because I think it’s the MOST important geopolitical observation of 2026

while America wages war China builds roads

literally, Belt & Road has invested over 1 trillion dollars across 150 countries building ports, railways, power plants & 5G networks, US spent roughly 8 trillion on Middleeast wars since 2001, China built high-speed rail connecting every major city while American rail looks like the 1970s, China built the world’s largest 5G network while US politicians debated banning TikTok, China builds nuclear plants at 10 per year while Europe debates wether nuclear is ethical

China connects itself to the developing world through infrastructure while while the west alienates it through wars, every port in Africa every railway in Southeast Asia creates relationships that last generations, these countries will remember who built their roads & who bombed their neighbors

Gulf sovereign wealth funds particularly from the UAE are quietly pivoting from the US to China, money attracts talent, talent attracts projects, projects attract more money, Silicon Valley ran on this flywheel for 40y, the same mechanism is now spinning up in China

the talents whoo leave are always the most ambitious & the most impatient, the west trains champions at MIT Stanford, Cambridge…then watches them go play for the opposing team because it offers neither the ecosystem nor the speed nor sometimes even the visa to stay

missiles can be rebuilt, economies restarted but a talent ecosystem once lost takes a generation to rebuild, right now the best minds on the planet are voting with their feet and their destination more & more often is east

[Thomas Chatterton Williams @thomaschattwill]

Whatever the reality, this marks a major epistemological turning point in the modern world.

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

The crimes of Operation Epstein Fury grow more shocking by the day

And as the atrocities pile up, more and more Western governments join to support them

[Nodutdol | 노둣돌 @nodutdol]

North Korea is garnering international attention for its recent construction boom. Here's a closer look at some of the recently unveiled projects that show the country’s priorities. 1/9

[👻☭ @redbeatsman]

@nise_yoshimi Let’s not grade it until both DLCs are out

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

Michael Parenti, the path-breaking Marxist scholar, historian and political scientist, passed today at age 92

He went peacefully this morning, surrounded by his family

“Now he is in what he used to refer to as ‘the great lecture hall in the sky,’” his son, Christian, reflected

[Rui Ma @ruima]

3. Profitability Is Rarely The Core Objective

Here's the part that confuses investors: profitability isn't the primary goal. High margins can even be a vulnerability because they attract competition, especially when supply chains are shared and capabilities diffuse quickly. Operating lean can be defensive.

Scale gets prioritized over near-term financial optimization. Scale brings bargaining power, learning effects, endurance.

Foreign investors ask "when will margins improve?" assuming that's the goal. It's not and I don't think it can be in this industry, frankly. Endurance comes first. Margin expansion gets earned later, if ever, once you have scale, position, and groundbreaking innovation at irrefutable scale. CATL has achieved this. Huawei too. But these are rare winners. One trip attendee said it well: "I don't know if Chinese manufacturers will ever make money but I came away not wanting to invest in any manufacturing business in the rest of the world."

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Carney: "American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security ... this bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition ... recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as a weapon. Tariffs as leverage ... "

[Briahna Joy Gray @briebriejoy]

I know we’re all inured to it, but I have to say as a biggish account that gets thousands of replies daily and can therefore easily observe trends: the bots have CLEARLY been instructed turn the conversation away from ICE/Gaza/Epstein to Iran.