Desmond Sham

@Gaurab ntp.co.za/fissionmo99/

40,000 medical procedures a day depend on an isotope the DOE called an unacceptable risk last month. Molybdenum-99 decays 1% every hour, cannot be stockpiled, and the US imports 100% of it. If you get a bone scan or a cardiac stress test, your tracer comes from one of six foreign reactors. Belgium's BR2 and the Dutch HFR first went critical in 1961, before the CT scan was even invented. NorthStar, the only US Mo-99 producer, halted in October 2023. In April the DOE wrote SHINE $263M to start producing in 2028. The facility was supposed to come online in 2021. When it ships, it covers ~75% of US demand. The other 25% stays imported. I came out of cancer biology before I started a chemicals company. Mo-99 is just one bottleneck. We don't make the materials we need to make the things we need.

@BrokenToysInv @Gaurab Replace "convenience" with "laziness".

@Gaurab Always amazes me how often some of the best businesses to invest in are also things that slowly kill people. Cigarettes. Alcohol. Ultra processed food. Sports betting. A lot of the biggest industries are built around human weakness, addiction, or convenience.

PepsiCo just closed two Frito-Lay plants. 430 workers in California and 454 in Florida. Campbell's shut its chip factory in Massachusetts. Smucker took a nearly $1 billion loss on Twinkies. Hershey's confectionery volumes fell 5% in a single quarter. The reason is one molecule. Semaglutide. I manufacture chemicals. 23% of American households now have a GLP-1 user. Each one consumes roughly 800 fewer calories per day. J.P. Morgan estimates a $30-55 billion annual demand reduction in food. Nestle launched its first new American brand in three decades, built for people who eat less. The $12 trillion food industry employs 30% of the global workforce. A single molecule is restructuring what humans eat. The companies that ignored it got fried. Chemistry is always the bottleneck.

@DeanOelsch My comment on a similar tweet about government workers: Averages hide a lot. One fat cat taking home R300k per month, and 9 workers earning R28k each. On average they all earn R56k. Except they don’t.

This is where the financial situation gets interesting. COJ's wage bill makes up 27% of the budget. How much is it? Well in 2009 it was R5.1bn and in 2024/25 it had increased to R21.6bn. 4x in 15 years. That works to an AVERAGE COJ employee earning R64,000 a month!!!

This City of Joburg "severe financial distress" that emerged today got me searching for some things. It's worse than you or I imagined... A thread:

@Beverleyward98 @MyJRA @Kenny_T_Kunene Take a walk down Medlar Rd. This is the main route from Beyers to the primary school, it is heavily used and is falling apart.

CSDFMC0469906 – 85 Seder Street CSDFMC0469905 – 85 Seder Street CSDFMC0469825 – 85 Seder Street CSDFMC0469779 – 9 Seder Street CSDFMC0469942 – 39 Seder Street CSDFMC0469936 – 49 Seder Street CSDFMC0469935 – 58 Seder Street @MyJRA @Kenny_T_Kunene

@keithmclachlan As long as Eskom is burning diesel to generate electricity to charge the vehicle batteries, the last part of the statement is not true.

From Clicks results out today: "UPD has doubled its fleet of pharma-compliant electric vehicles to 85, with 86% of wholesale deliveries and 74% of total travel no longer exposed to fuel costs."

@thyphoidjack Might be relevant and interesting. indicatorloops.com/southafrica.htm

Here we have the layout of the Anti-Submarine Indicator Loops that protected Table Bay and the Port of Cape Town during World War Two. Apparently, there were two reported U-Boat crossings of these Indicator Loops during the War. The only German U-Boat sunk in South African waters during World War Two with the loss of all hands was U-179 that was depth-charged and sunk on 08 October 1942 by the Royal Navy Destroyer HMS Active (H14) at Position 33°16'48.0"S 17°03'00.0"E approximately 84km from Saldanha.

@tshepomotau10 @Askash @uMarhobane Politics aside. Tourists need to eat => farmers, transport, packaging, wholesalers, retailers, preparation, etc. Each of those has their own supply chain, with mining, manufacturing, logistics. These require design, engineering, construction, testing. Tourism helps SA develop.

@Askash @uMarhobane On stop it Ash... Stop it please you are singing for bread... There's far more to be done than always cry about tourism as if it is the only industry that matters in SA that building could be turned into affordable accommodation im the inner city.... The DA cam fuck off.

What is the DA's obsession with tourism? Manufacturing and artisanal skills are regarded as an afterthought, as if the only purpose of this nation is as a playground for foreigners

@sowelleconomics Averages hide a lot. One fat cat taking home R300k per month, and 9 workers earning R28k each. On average they all earn R56k. Except they don’t.

The most useless non-productive employees apart from politicians are getting high salaries. People who work at KFC and other retail outlets add more value than government administrative employees in our society.

@RoryDuncan1966 Professor Google: While traditional uses are well-documented, modern scientific research is still catching up, and users should approach its use with informed caution. Always consult a healthcare professional before starting any new supplement regimen

This is my home along the banks of the Kamannassie River just above it's confluence with the mighty Oliphants River 500 meters below the homestead in the KleinKaroo. We have water rights to pump from the river into a huge man made dam some 185 meters long x 25 meters wide and 6 meters deep. It holds millions of liters of water. Behind the dam are level fields of 4 hectares and beyond that a further 16 hectares of arable land. This year we are going to build the first 2 hectare growing house to plant Sceletium tortuosum and will expand constantly from thereon by building more shade houses to expand our Sceletium production to 10 hectares. The Sceletium plant is a small annual succulent which usually only grows in winter in the wild. But under shade cloth and with the right pots, soil, water and light management we have made it grow year round. This plant has been used for millennia by the Khoi people of the Klein Karoo and the San folk further north west as a stimulant. The compounds of alkaloids in the plant are extremely powerful and they all work inside the brain. It is a psycho-active plant, not a psychedelic plant. It is fully legal and there is no known lethal dose. When we first ventured into the Sceletium business we camped for 1 year deep in the Baviaanskloof wilderness living with a man who had made Sceletium medicine extracts and concentrates in the ancient artisanal way. We set up a growing facility and sought out a genotype from the hills above Willowmore 120 kilometers away. After a year of hard work in the deep bush we had successfully manufactured our first large batch of Sceletium concentrated paste. We did the process in a scientific way by recording all events in the process, taking and freezing samples every hour over the 12 day fermentation period and logging all activity throughout the process. We then took the paste to Professor Stander at her Stellenbosch University Central Analytics Laboratories where the multiple samples were analyzed marking step by step the changes in molecular structure of the compound of alkaloids in the mixture. Eventually we had achieved a powerful extract which with just 5mg of paste consumed by mouth would give one a powerful feeling of well being and a calm energy and focus. The substance was a thick sticky tar-like substance, dark brown and highly aromatic, but almost impossible to work with due to its tacky gooey nature. We then went to Oudtshoorn, the largest town in the Klein Karoo and we found a family business there run by the Groenewald's. A group of scientists with special skills in fermenting plants to make pro-biotics, among many other smart plant products. We formed a joint venture with the distinct purpose of commercializing the fermentation, filtering, and drying of the compound into a workable powder so that we could use it in capsules and other delivery methods. This worked well and we launched our first products 3 x capsule variants, 1 for kids and a vape juice too. However we needed to go deeper into molecular concentration and so for the next two years we worked tirelessly at the extracting and concentration of only the active alkaloids and getting rid of all plant matter, remaining only with the molecular mass of the concentrated actives. Im proud to say that we've finally done it. We now have a world class, pharmaceutical type extract, blended down from a 70% alkaloid concentrated mass to a standardized 5% inclusion of live alkaloids. This substance is incredibly powerful and effective. It is wonderfully elevating. It gives you heightened sense of clarity of vision and hearing that is phenomenal. Your energy levels increase wonderfully and yet you have complete focus and self control. You can use it regularly without any negative effects such as a hangover and afterwards one sleeps like a baby. It is simply put, a breakthrough in plant medicine and supplements and is now being used in beverages, chocolates n gummies around the world

@engineers_feed It's not practical to do this, but a suitable simulation might be to put down a sheet of paper, then another, then 2 more, then 4 more, then 8, 16, ... until you reach the moon.

"If you folded a piece of paper in half 42 times, it would reach the moon If you folded it 103 times, it would be thicker than the observable Universe.

@StuartDAA Agreed. Irrelevant if you’re abled. Torture if you are disabled. Imagine having to take a wheel chair down the zigs and zags. Or up!

@grok @SecDeph @SimonPB x.com/CaseySprake/st…

@SecDeph @SimonPB Sure, happy to help summarize! But I can't directly access the full text of that X Article with my tools right now. If you paste the key sections or main points here, I'll break it down clearly and concisely for the thread. What's the headline or first paragraph?

did not know about this .. a big change

@StatsSA @Tourism_gov_za Do we know how many actually returned home before their visas expired?

#WeDoTourism || In 2025, 75,2% of all tourists came from neighbouring Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, while tourists from other African countries contributed 1,9%. 🔗: statssa.gov.za/?p=19362 #StatsSA #KnowYourStatsZA #GovZAUpdates @Tourism_gov_za

@madaboutmarkets cries

@ConCaracal The only thing that is wrong in the new image is the crooked street pole. I’m sure your guys can even fix that.

Lately, a lot of posts have gone viral for effectively exposing South Africa’s shocking urban decay under ANC-rule by comparing Google Street View images from the mid-2000’s with the same images in 2026. To celebrate AfriForum's 20th birthday, I'd like to share an uplifting before-and-after image for a change:

@Rendani666 Is there a conclusion to this story? Criminals identified? Prosecutions? Convictions? Recovery of funds?

Ahmed Patel ran a wholesale electronics business out in Crown Mines, supplying phones, accessories, and small appliances to independent retailers across Gauteng, Limpopo, and parts of Mpumalanga. A thread.

@KoosKanmar Maybe, but not ethical.

Would it be illegal to build an army of AI agents that you can rent to push up your views on social media sites ?

@themaritimenet The rust!

🚢 Watching FLORIDA glide past the port is a reminder of how massive these ships really are. Smooth, steady, and impossible to ignore. What catches your eye first — the size, the movement, or something else?

@HairyQuagmire @Abramjee Rubbish. In other countries, you can do as she did. My experience in Dubai showed that people in a restaurant put their wallets and keys and cellphones on the table and went to look at the buffet. Nothing was touched. This should not be expected as normal.

@Abramjee Leaving your Belongings unattended as an adult?. She deserves it

Theft: Victim says: “Yesterday at around 14:48, I left my handbag unattended in the fitting room at Clothing Junction, Sunnypark Mall, Pretoria. Two females took my handbag and used my card to make unauthorized purchases at nearby shops, including Watloo Meat and a liquor store, incurring a loss of R2000. I have notified my bank and SAPS about the incident and am circulating a video of the suspects.”

@ladydebidebz1 @libertarianrsa @CapeIndy From another website: The pier was opened 21 November 1913 and was demolished in late 1939 to make way for land reclamation to provide Berths E to L for Duncan Dock.

@libertarianrsa @CapeIndy I think they meant 1890s 🤦

Early 1990s Pier at the bottom of Adderley Street