Luc Van Braekel

Good Morning from Germany, where the road to socialism is paved with ever-rising govt consumption. Since 1999, state consumption is up 63%, while GDP has risen only 31% and capital investment a meagre 16%. The public sector keeps expanding, but the investment base is stagnating. Germany is becoming less of a market economy and more of a state-led redistribution machine.

Top trolling from the Israeli Foreign Ministry

Marc Andreessen said programmers aren't disoccupied, we haven't become obsolete, quite the opposite, we're all working around the clock. It's true. Everyone is doing it. We got a new brain that can do all kinds of amazing things. You don't get a new super powerful brain organ every day.

@Deez69Nutts @TriplePlayHQ @InTheAssembly The last sentence gave it away. AI always wants to end social media posts with some call for engagement.

@TriplePlayHQ @InTheAssembly AI Slop

SpaceX is about to be the largest IPO in human history. But here’s the catch… It’s also going to be the trade most retail investors REGRET for the next 5 years. Here’s why, and the 4 space stocks I’m actually paying attention to instead: On June 12, SpaceX will list on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX. The expected valuation is around $1.75 trillion. That’s more than twice the previous record IPO, and more than the GDP of all but a handful of countries on earth. But even if SpaceX doubles from there, your return is 100%. In the same window, a small cap space stock with the right setup can do 5x or 10x. The math simply does not work for retail investors hoping for asymmetric returns from a trillion dollar IPO. You are buying a fully priced, fully discovered, fully institutional name on day one. The real money in space is not SpaceX. It’s in the smaller, less-followed public names that will get revalued the moment SpaceX trades. Here are the 4 I am watching: VELO Velo3D 3D prints metal parts inside SpaceX's Raptor engines. SpaceX backed them early and was their first customer. The cleanest direct supplier name on the public market. RDW Redwire Space The picks and shovels of space infrastructure. Solar arrays, deployable structures, microgravity manufacturing. The stuff every satellite and spacecraft needs. BKSY BlackSky Real-time earth observation satellites with major defense and intelligence customer base. Sub-billion-dollar market cap with a Pentagon backlog. GHM Graham Corporation Rocket turbopumps through its Barber-Nichols subsidiary. Already supplies multiple US launch players. Nobody is pricing the space exposure inside this name. Most of these sit between $1 billion and $4 billion market cap. Meaning even if they 5x to 10x from here, they would still be relatively small businesses. That’s the power of an asymmetric bet. Either it goes to zero, or it does 5x to 10x over the next few years. At The Assembly, we are a team of 8 with one goal: help you find the right stocks early. Turn notifications on so you don’t miss our alerts. This is EXTREMELY important. If you are not following us yet, you will understand later why that was a mistake.

We are at a moment that will define President Trump’s legacy. His instincts have been to finish the job he started in Iran, but he is being ill advised to pursue a deal that would not be worth the paper it is written on. Our commander-in-chief needs to allow America's skilled armed forces to finish the destruction of Iran's conventional military capabilities and reopen the strait.   Further pursuit of an agreement with Iran's Islamist regime risks a perception of weakness. We must finish what we started. It is past time for action.

¿Quien los entiende? Quiere que España pida perdón por algo que pasó hace 500 años, pero pide que perdonen a Raul Castro porque ya pasaron 30 años. La locura izquierdista es digna de análisis clínico.

1/ The European Court of Human Rights just ruled against a Georgian food delivery driver who screamed profanities at the mayor of Tbilisi on TikTok over the city's bus lane policy. Unanimous. No violation of free expression. 🧵on why this is bad news for free speech in Europe

Deeply worrying to see the European Commission justifying shady Spanish accounting (supposedly because it undermines support for joint EU debt): "They are talking about the existence of excess liquidity, and what they argue is a degree of liberty for member states to use it," MEP @jvanovertveldt told Euronews. "But my god. How do we control this? And what is the money being used for? Until the Commission comes up with a clearer explanation and clearer numbers, there will remain a cloud of doubt."

ASML ceo on the EU's dreadful AI Act: “We didn’t start running, we didn’t start even walking, and we already had in front of us all the obstacles to not be able to make even the first step.” politico.eu/article/top-te…

Seattle's mayor picketed Starbucks and told businesses to leave. Now she's telling the New York Times she was wrong. Meanwhile, Nashville is getting 2,000 Starbucks corporate jobs — and former CEO Howard Schultz is naming her by name in the Wall Street Journal.

Starbucks was started in 1971 in downtown Seattle. Howard Schultz bought it in 1987 and took it public in 1992 with 140 stores, then grew it to 677 locations by 1995. Today it has 38,000 stores across more than 80 countries. Katie Wilson was just elected Seattle Mayor on November 13, 2025 when she called for a boycott of Starbucks. Starbucks officially announced their new headquarters with 2,000 employees in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 21, 2026. Another example of how democrat socialist policies actually work out.

This is unconscionable. The Governor of CA, an elected official meant to serve the constituents of this state, both individuals and their companies, is urging us to AVOID a company here. Incredibly unethical and disqualifying. No doubt a spiteful response to @Chevron informing the CA citizens that the reason our gas is always outrageously expensive is because of the CA gas tax. That is a FACT cause by the CA Gov. I will be intentionally buying gas at Chevron this week in LA.

I hope @DanaBashCNN and @CNN will clarify this Talarico issue. Here is the chryon which claims Trump "falsely claiming" Talarico "believes in six genders." Attached is the video where Talarico claims exactly that thing Trump said.

This article is smaller in scope than usual, but I was genuinely curious about why the usual pro-democracy groups were involved in Block the Merger campaign.

Speaking to reporters earlier about the ongoing outbreak of Ebola in Central Africa, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed reports that a commercial flight operated by Air France that was bound for Detroit, was diverted last night to Montreal, Canada after it was discovered a passenger from the Democratic Republic of the Congo was “accidentally” allowed to board in Paris.

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things. —Douglas Adams

Ukraine may have found a cheap way to give a drone extra range. Let a balloon do the first 42 km. ㅤ Ukrainian troops reportedly tested launching the Ukrainian-American Hornet one-way attack drone from an aerostat. The balloon carried it 42 km and released it from 8 km altitude. ㅤ The drone used only about 5% of its battery before beginning its own flight. ㅤ The trick is simple: the balloon provides distance and altitude, while the drone keeps almost all of its battery for the real mission. If proven at scale, it could push Hornet’s estimated 100–150 km reach by another 1.5 to 2 times. ㅤ This is what Ukrainian defense innovation often looks like: clever ways to stretch what already exists. ㅤ

There is a genuinely bizarre psychological dynamic unfolding right now around this war. Trump appears convinced that the war is unpopular at home, that Americans want out, and that domestic priorities must now take precedence - even if that means accepting a deal that, only weeks ago, would have looked humiliating by American standards. Remember where this started: “unconditional surrender” for Iran. Now? If the current trajectory continues - with Tehran refusing compromise on the nuclear file, ballistic missiles, proxies, and now effectively trying to invent a new doctrine around controlling the Strait of Hormuz - we could end up watching something that looks disturbingly like unconditional surrender… but for the US! And here’s the irony that’s frying my brain right now: Even some of the people inside the US political circles who opposed the war are suddenly horrified at the prospect of a half-finished war. Because an unfinished war is not “peace.” A half-finished war risks looking like strategic exhaustion. It risks damaging American prestige, deterrence, and by extension the credibility of the “mighty” dollar itself. People forget something very important: America First at home only works if America remains first abroad. The dollar is not magic paper blessed by the gods of Wall Street. It sits on three pillars: reserve currency status, energy trade dominance, and global trade settlement. Those pillars are reinforced when the United States projects global military strength and reliability. Ironically, during the war itself, you saw parts of the market reacting exactly to that logic: commodities wobbling, safe-haven psychology shifting, the dollar strengthening because global markets still instinctively run toward American power in moments of crisis. So now we arrive at the weirdest part of all: Trump, fearing the war is unpopular, may have accidentally made it more popular by appearing too eager to leave it unfinished. Because suddenly people are imagining the consequences of an Iran that is eschatologically and fanatically emboldened after surviving the confrontation - thinking the “unseen divine hands of the hidden Imam Mahdi” did it - while still threatening the arteries of the global economy through the Strait of Hormuz. And this is where my brain officially melts.🫠 Was this deliberate? Was this the madman theory? Was it incoherent incoherence? Or coherent incoherence designed to create maximum unpredictability? Did Trump intentionally manufacture uncertainty to pressure Tehran? Or are we all collectively trying to reverse-engineer strategy out of chaos because nobody actually knows what’s happening? At this point, I genuinely need a whole liter of Coke Zero and a whiteboard the size of the Sahara just to map the psychology of this thing. Thank you all for following this utterly insane geopolitical soap opera with me. I still can’t decide whether we are witnessing strategic genius, strategic improvisation, or history’s first case of weaponized confusion as a doctrine of statecraft.🤦🏻‍♂️

The maxim of Hateful Schrödinger Canadians: Canadians: F**k off to the US. We hate you. You are a far-right @elonmusk buddy. We don't need you. After hearing this for years, I said "OK. I'm off." Same Canadians: You piece of s**t. You are deserting us for the US. You are a traitor.

Trump needs to seriously consider both his legacy, and current standing, with Republicans if he continues his post-ceasefire pattern of bold red-line threats followed by repeated retreats and extensions vis-à-vis Iran Conservatives are a voting base forged in the aftermath of the lessons of WW2 and the Cold War, and one of the fundamental principles they believe in is peace through strength But what Trump has been doing lately with his repeated threats without follow through are not all that different than Obama and his red line...although this conflict isn't over yet so he can still salvage this Currently, I don't see any prospect of Iran agreeing to any deal that is anything other than another JCPOA...and no, Trump is not going to be able to sell that to Republicans I concede that geopolitics are infinitely complicated and there are lots of things to consider behind the scenes regarding energy security, US interests, etc...but these were all calculations that needed to be taken into consideration before he began this war It's also something he needed to consider before agreeing (and repeatedly extending) a ceasefire because when he did that, he moved his own goalposts. He now needs to get a good deal (that accomplished his stated objectives) or regime collapse...and neither is possible without maximum pressure on the regime Trump’s first-term maximum-pressure campaign cratered Iran’s economy, forced the IRGC to slash proxy budgets, triggered Hezbollah layoffs and Syrian drawdowns, and paved the way for the Abraham Accords. By contrast, Obama’s JCPOA and Biden’s sanctions relief only enabled more of Tehran’s funding of terror groups and its sprint toward nuclear breakout. Only sustained strength has ever made the regime blink...anything less is simply repeating the same failed playbook And that will mean escalation, which is not desirable, but neither is allowing the status quo to persist No, Iran is not winning the war...but Trump sure does seem to be doing everything possible to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory And if he doesn't get this right, then he'll pay dearly politically just like Joe Biden did with Afghanistan