Disco Lights

🦔 Oracle laid off between 20,000 and 30,000 employees Tuesday morning, roughly 18% of its global workforce, via a single email sent at 6am EST with no prior warning. System access was revoked almost immediately after. The cuts are expected to free up $8-10 billion in cash flow. Oracle's stock has lost more than half its value since September 2025 and the company now carries over $124 billion in debt, up from $89 billion a year ago, with free cash flow running negative $10 billion last quarter. My Take Oracle posted a 95% jump in net income last quarter and still eliminated 18% of its workforce by email before most people finished their morning coffee. This is not a company in distress in the traditional sense. It's a company that made an enormous debt-funded bet on AI infrastructure and is now converting its workforce into cash flow to service that debt. We've covered Oracle's AI gamble for months. The $300 billion OpenAI deal through Stargate, $50 billion in capital expenditure this fiscal year, over $124 billion in total debt. Multiple US banks have pulled back from financing Oracle-linked data center projects. Bondholders have sued Oracle claiming it concealed how much additional debt the OpenAI deal would require. The credit default swap spread hit a three-year high earlier this year, meaning debt investors are genuinely nervous about getting paid back. The workers who got that 6am email built the products Oracle has monetized for decades. The bet that eliminated their jobs was made by people who were already paid regardless of how it turns out. That is the part of the AI infrastructure race that doesn't show up in the capex announcements. Hedgie🤗

President Ramaphosa says “41 freight rail slots have been allocated to private train operating companies and we expect the first private operator to commence operations in 2027 which will end inefficient monopolies and introduce competition that will reduce costs over time”

🎬America Sniper (2014)

VIDEO | Israeli National Security Minister Ben Gvir, outside the Knesset chamber, celebrates the passing of the death penalty law for Palestinian detainees, describing it as historic and saying, “Soon we will count them one by one.”

South Africa must temporarily abandon Pan Africanism

Jeremy Lin with an awesome breakdown on how Luka is so good in isolation:

LeBron is gonna have the greatest basketball documentary of all time 🐐.

I can't imagine the trauma the passenger went through when the door didn't want to open 😭

"Player of the month" 🤣🤣 love the harmony in this group 🇿🇦

Kids today will never know how big of a deal it was to go to the computer lab