James Heyworth

The Strait of Hormuz crisis just claimed its first VICTIM but the real damage hasn't even started yet. Two days ago Spirit Airlines (the 8th largest airline in America) permanently shut down. Everyone's blaming legacy debt and bad management. Fine. But the KILLING BLOW was jet fuel doubling from $74 to $150 a barrel in 10 weeks because the Strait of Hormuz is CLOSED and there is no plan to reopen it. Spirit is the first domino, and it will not be the last: The Federation of Indian Airlines (representing Air India, IndiGo, SpiceJet) just warned the government that their entire industry is "on the verge of closing down." Ryanair's CEO publicly named Wizz Air and Air Baltic as the next to go bankrupt by autumn. Air France-KLM disclosed $2.4 BILLION in additional fuel costs this year. The IEA says Europe has 6 weeks of jet fuel left. And here's where it gets really bad... Airlines are the EASY part of this story. The hard part is food: One-third of global fertilizer trade flows through Hormuz. Nitrogen prices are up over 40% since February. The American Farm Bureau found that 70% of farmers nationwide cannot afford all the fertilizer they need this year. A Michigan farmer told PBS his nitrogen cost went from $350 a ton in January to $600. An Iowa farmer said he's skipping nutrients entirely. This has a deadline and the deadline is NOW. The Corn Belt planting window is mid-April through early May. Nitrogen has to reach the crop during early growth or it does nothing. Apply it 3 weeks late and corn yields drop 10 to 25%. You can hear what the farmer in the clip below (which is already a MONTH old) said. We're in it. Even if Hormuz reopens tomorrow, restarting fertilizer production and transport takes WEEKS that farmers do not have. And nobody has a Plan B. G7 countries stockpile oil - but nobody stockpiled fertilizer. Saudi Arabia's bypass pipeline carries crude, not ammonia. There is no workaround. And it doesn't stop at food. Qatar produces a third of the world's helium - a gas that is IRREPLACEABLE in semiconductor manufacturing. Chipmakers use it to cool silicon wafers during fabrication There is no substitute. Iranian strikes damaged Qatar's production facilities at Ras Laffan, and even the helium that IS being produced can't get out because it ships through Hormuz. Spot prices have doubled. South Korea gets 55% of its helium from the Gulf. Taiwan gets 69%. Those are the two countries that make virtually ALL of the world's advanced chips. SEMI, the semiconductor industry association, said even if the Strait opened today it would take 4 to 6 months to normalize supply. So every AI bull pricing in infinite chip scaling should be asking one very simple question: Where is the helium coming from? And this isn't getting resolved because Iran has ZERO incentive to give anything up. Hormuz is the only card they have and they know the political clock in Washington is working entirely in their favor: Trump's approval just hit 34% - lowest of his second term. Democrats lead the generic ballot by 10 points. A majority of voters view the Iran operation as a failure. Midterms are only 6 months out. Iran sees all of this. They know time pressure falls on Washington, not Tehran. Their demands - frozen assets released, all sanctions lifted, continued control of Hormuz, enrichment rights preserved - haven't budged since the Islamabad talks collapsed. The Pentagon told Congress mine clearing alone could take 6 months. And that can't even START until the war ends. Meanwhile Brent sits above $110 and both sides are blockading each other: Iran blockades the Gulf. The US blockades Iran. The global economy is caught between two walls closing in. Markets are pricing this like a temporary disruption. But it is NOT temporary. The fertilizer damage is already done for this growing season, food price increases are baked in through 2027, the airline shakeout is just beginning, the semiconductor supply chain is fraying, and the diplomatic stalemate has no obvious exit because neither side can afford to blink. I've been saying the margin of safety was too thin and complacency would be punished. Energy is the trade. Spirit Airlines just died two days ago and proved it.

Winston Churchill fought his depression with bricks. He'd lay them for hours at his country home in Kent. He joined the bricklayers' union. And in 1921 he wrote about why it worked. It took psychology another 75 years to catch up. He called his depression the "Black Dog." It followed him for decades. His method for fighting it back was as basic as it sounds: laying brick after brick, hour after hour. Churchill spelled out his theory in a long essay for The Strand Magazine. People who think for a living, he wrote, can't fix a tired brain just by resting it. They have to use a different part of themselves. The part that moves the eyes and the hands. Woodworking, chemistry, bookbinding, bricklaying, painting. Anything that drags the body into a problem the mind can't solve by itself. Modern psychology now calls this behavioral activation. It's one of the most-studied depression treatments out there. Depression sets a behavior trap. You feel bad, so you stop doing things, and doing less means less to feel good about. Feeling worse makes you do even less. The loop tightens until you can't breathe inside it. Behavioral activation breaks the loop from the action side. You schedule the activity first, even when every part of you doesn't want to. Doing it produces small rewards: a wall gets straighter, a painting fills in, a messy room gets clean. Those small rewards slowly rewire the brain. Action comes first, and the feeling follows. Researchers at the University of Washington put this to the test in 2006. They studied 241 adults with major depression and compared three treatments: behavioral activation, regular talk therapy, and antidepressants. For the people who were most severely depressed, behavioral activation matched the drugs. It beat the talk therapy. A 2014 review of more than 1,500 patients across 26 trials backed up the result. Physical work like bricklaying does something extra on top of this. It crowds out rumination, the looping bad thoughts that grind people down during the worst stretches of depression. Bricklaying needs both hands and gives feedback brick by brick: each one is straight or crooked. After an hour you can see exactly how much wall you built. No room left for the mental chewing. The line George Mack used in his post, "depression hates a moving target," is good poetry. The science behind it is sharper. Depression hates a brain that has somewhere else to be.

We’re basically 2-4 weeks away from a global economic catastrophe. Enjoy May because if things don’t change in the Strait of Hormuz we are never going back to the way things were.

A friend of mine working on a trading floor for an investment bank in London just told me the atmosphere there feels “surreal”

The israeli courts have extended the custody of @gbsumudflotilla activists & fathers Saif Abu Kashk & Thiago Ávila for 6 more days

Join the "One Million Voices for the Free of Hussam Abu Safieh" campaign. Reply with 🇵🇸 or even a dot.

The zionist regime has, once again, extended the illegal detention of our friends; Saif Abukeshek and Thiago Ávila. Our organizers have been illegally kidnapped in international waters, subjected to beatings and torture in Greek territorial waters, and forcefully brought against their will to occupied Palestine, where they have been subjected to interrogations, death threats, sleep deprivation and medical neglect. We urge the international community and their representatives to immediately take action for the safety and freedom of Saif and Thiago, the freedom of all Palestinian hostages and the end of israel's illegal siege of Gaza and its genocide. Free them all! Court images: Adalah Legal Center

🚨 BREAKING: The plot to remove Keir Starmer has officially begun. A group of Labour MPs are currently preparing an open letter demanding a timetable for his resignation following Thursday's expected local election bloodbath. His premiership is collapsing in real time. 🧵👇

Spain’s national TV giving 40 minutes of coverage to the flotilla members kidnapped in Israel. This is exactly the kind of sustained attention European media should give whenever their citizens face human rights violations abroad.

And there is the reality. All of the promises, all the rhetoric, all the empty, meaningless words. Welsh Water at its finest.

“Shame on you Jeff Bezos” Activists in NYC project a message on the side of Jeff Bezos’ $120M penthouse from a 72-year-old Amazon worker in North Carolina ahead of the MET Gala tonight

Farage and the dodgy £5m donation finally gets a mention on the BBC but still not a single word on a single front page.

The lack of news on Gaza isn’t because the genocide is over. It’s because Israel slaughtered the journalists and Western media pretends there’s a ceasefire.

Fourteen years later and they’re still close friends 🫶🏻

Free Thiago and Saif who were illegally kidnapped from international waters

Mark Carney criticises the USA under Trump for trashing the international order, "It’s my strong personal view that as the international order will be rebuilt, but it will be rebuilt out of Europe" #RejoinEU

Ex wife of Colin Firth tells Anna Wintour she is “heartbroken” she allowed Jeff Bezos to sponsor the Met Gala. Livia Firth has branded the Amazon founder “one of the most dangerous men in the world” while comparing the Met Gala to ‘The Hunger Games.’

🚨 BREAKING: Ireland has officially recognized the state of Palestine.

'Farage was given about a fifth of all the money donated to all political parties in 2025.' @lewis_goodall puts Reform's donations in context amid accusations of 'conflict of interest'.

🚨🇪🇸🇮🇱Spain is preparing to provide full legal support to the crew members of the Freedom Flotilla who were detained by Israel.