Prometheus 2.1

Trump's job report numbers are fake. Digging into the data, almost all the job creation is in the healthcare field... which is the same industry JD Vance is investigating for fraud. The construction jobs are real proof of reindustrialization, but the rest of the economy is dead.

Sweden 🇸🇪: Eritrean immigrant taxi driver rapes a 15-year-old girl. Her boyfriend organizes with his 3 older brothers, they trick the foreigner into a nature reserve with the promise of sexual favors, overpower him, strangle him and hang his body from a tree in the forest (trying to stage it as suicide). Arrested. The oldest of the 4 brothers (18 at the time) gets life sentence. The other three brothers and the girl herself get between 3 and 4 years in closed youth detention (the girl and her 15-year-old boyfriend got 3.5 years each for aiding and abetting, as they weren’t at the scene). In appeal, three brothers acquitted of murder, the oldest one gets 7 years instead of life, the others get closed youth care.

Bring back chivalry, like literal Christian chivalry.The stuff from the Gawain poet and the like.The Arthurian model.That's the true model for the Christian man not some nietzschean self-centered "blonde beast" or some pagan nonsense.

May I offer a different perspective on the whole transatlantic family feud brewing over NATO. Europeans are furious at what they call American unilateralism and "wars of choice," while Americans are done subsidizing allies who won't lift a finger when Washington actually needs them. Given all the sentimentality and historical baggage, there’s been a lot of bad blood and high grade insults thrown both ways. A lot of pride here is at stake. But given that I am not American or European, what I can provide is an Asian perspective. The whole thing looks very different as there are no blood ties or cultural nostalgia to pull me either way. Because of distance, the default Asian lens on America has always been colder, clearer, and far more pragmatic than the European one. Asians have never lived under the illusion that their relationship to the US is one based on shared values. If they ever did, the illusion was shattered during the Cold War. Instead, Asian nations saw the relationship to America as a cold, interest-driven bargain in a dangerous neighborhood full of communists, insurgents, and bigger powers. Fast forward to today, and this lesson still holds. Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia all partner with America because their interests (not values) align - especially when it comes to countering China. These nations have reasons to be alarmed about Beijing's ambitions in the South China Sea, around Taiwan, and across the Indo-Pacific. They don't need lectures about democracy or liberal international order to see the value in US forward presence, intelligence sharing, tech transfers, and security guarantees. It's a straight-up transactional deal: the US keeps the sea lanes open and the PLA at bay. Meanwhile, Asian nations host your bases, buy your weapons, and join your alliances (Quad, AUKUS, etc.). When interests diverge, they adjust pragmatically, without the drama and meltdown. Probably not many in the West know this, but one of the forces that shaped this attitude was the US pullout of Vietnam and the rest of America’s Cold War shenanigans. Lee Kuan Yew was one of America’s loudest cheerleaders in Southeast Asia. In 1967 he flew to Washington, testified to Congress, and begged Lyndon Johnson (and later Nixon) not to cut and run in Vietnam. He warned that a hasty US exit would trigger the dominoes - Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and then pressure on the rest of Southeast Asia. Singapore became a logistical hub, providing a haven for US troops on R&R, oil refineries supplying the American war machine, and Lockheed servicing aircraft. At one point, US military-related spending made up 15% of Singapore’s entire GDP. Singapore didn’t support the war because it loved American democracy but because it kept the communists tied up and bought Southeast Asia time to build up its own economy and military. Then came the pullout - the Paris Accords in 1973 and then Saigon falls in 1975. Despite all the lobbying, despite the blood and resources America had spent, domestic politics in the US (the anti-war movement, Congress, Vietnam syndrome etc.) ended it. LKY watched in disbelief as the superpower that had promised to hold the line simply walked away. The lesson was that American commitments are real only as long as they serve American interests and American voters don’t get tired. It’s a brutal one to internalize. LKY was disappointed and noted American “unreliability” but Singapore didn’t collapse into panic or anti-Americanism. They just recalibrated and kept pursuing pragmatism by building its own deterrent, diversifying partners, and later offered the US naval logistics access (Sembawang port) when the Philippines kicked them out of Subic Bay in the early 1990s. Malaysia drew the same conclusion. The Tunku was pro-Western and anti-communist early on, but Malaysia never joined SEATO and pushed ZOPFAN (Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality) instead. When the British announced their East-of-Suez withdrawal in 1968 and Nixon’s Doctrine (1969) told Asians “you defend yourselves first, we’ll just help,” Kuala Lumpur accelerated its neutralist tilt. The message was clear - don’t count on Washington to bleed indefinitely for distant allies. South Korea is similarly pragmatic but it operates under far higher stakes due to baggage from the Korean War and the ongoing North Korean threat. American intervention literally saved the South from conquest, resulting in a bond that is forged in blood. While South Korea had to learn the same lessons - that the American umbrella isn’t permanent, sharing a border with a nuclear-armed adversary forces tighter coupling with Washington. The reverberations of Nixon’s 1973 opening to Beijing cannot be understated. It shocked the entire region that America, the great anti-communist crusader, suddenly would cozy up to Mao to counter the Soviets. If Washington could flip on core principles when interests demanded it, why should smaller states pretend the relationship was about anything deeper? The core Asian critique of the European approach to dealing with America is that it is entirely bound up in moral values and civilizational kinship. This means that every disagreement feels like a betrayal and breeds resentment on both sides. Because Europe is so hyped up on abstract values, it makes NATO feel like a sacred club that America is disrespecting. Asia's interest-based lens sees alliances as tools - useful until they're not. Maybe Europe thinks the Asian approach is cynical but the irony is that this is actually what keeps Indo-Pacific partners far more reliable counterweights to China than many NATO members ever were against Russia.

My parents took us to Applebee's growing up. It was the "we're not cooking tonight" restaurant. Nothing fancy. Nobody pretended the food was good. It was just...easy. And cheap. Went back recently with my family and the bill for two adults and a kid was $82.48. Applebee's. The place that microwaves half the menu. Eighty dollars. For that. And I sat there looking at the receipt thinking...this pretty much sums up everything about the US economy right now. A million dollars used to mean you were rich. Like, actually rich. "Never worry about money again" rich. Now it barely buys a house in a good school district. After taxes and a down payment, you're financing the rest like everybody else. I think about this every time someone acts shocked that companies hire internationally. Have they looked at a price tag recently? In-N-Out pays $20/hour for entry-level associates. Twenty dollars. To flip burgers and wrap them in paper. And look — I'm not knocking the In-N-Out workers. Good for them. Get yours. But when that's the floor...when the absolute entry-level minimum for fast food is $20/hour...what does an experienced Executive Assistant cost? What does a skilled Project Manager run? What does a mid-level Developer go for? More than most companies can sustainably afford. That's the answer. And it goes up every year while the output stays the same. Or gets worse. Running a company in 2026 means watching every line item creep up — rent, software, insurance, payroll — while your revenue fights for every inch of growth. And here's where I always lose people: It ain't about finding "cheap labor." That framing is lazy and it's wrong. A professional in Bogota or Belgrade earning $2,000/month isn't being exploited. They're upper-middle class in their market. They're building a career. They're supporting a family. They chose this opportunity over local alternatives because it pays well and offers real growth. That same $2,000 in Manhattan doesn't cover the broom closet pretending to be a studio apartment monthly rent. You'd need a roommate, a trust fund, or a miracle. Same skill set. Same output. Same quality of work. Wildly different cost of living. It's not complicated math. It's just math that most companies haven't caught up to yet. The question isn't whether international hiring makes sense. The question is how long you're willing to overpay before you accept that it does.

・・・あれから改良を重ねた結果、俺はとんでもないものを作ってしまったかもしれない