Ermarluck

Glenn Beck: "Where do you stand on the WEF?" RFK Jr: "We shouldn't be paying any attention to it. It's a billionaires boys club that’s arranging for the world to shift wealth upward, and to clamp down totalitarian controls on everybody else". "It's astonishing to me that these people go to Davos in their private jets, and they're able to tell these world leaders how to govern us in ways that eradicate our constitutional and civil rights." "COVID we shifted $4 trillion of wealth upward. We closed all of the little guys. They were all colluding with each other to censor guys like me complaining about it."

A group of UC Berkeley students did a 9-week digital detox… and the results were striking. Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Sahar Yousef (UC Berkeley Haas) found that participants experienced less anxiety, less depression, and more mindfulness. Some students said they suddenly started noticing all the positive things in their real life once the constant scrolling stopped. Dr. Yousef also raised a concern, noting that heavy daily tech habits may be linked to brain changes: “We’re actually seeing brain atrophy… degradation of certain brain areas related to self-awareness [and] cognitive control.” (Note: This is an emerging area of research — more long-term studies are needed.) This feels very relatable. The longer I step away from endless scrolling, the clearer and calmer my mind seems to get. Our digital habits have become so automatic that we rarely stop to consider their impact on mental health and focus. Have you ever tried even a short digital detox? What difference (if any) did you notice?

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🇨🇳 China is targeting 70% domestic silicon wafer use by 2026 Silicon wafers are the base layer of every chip ever made. Xi'an Eswin Material Technology alone is aiming for 1.2M wafers per month by 2026, covering 40% of China's 12-inch wafer demand. For Japanese and Taiwanese suppliers who currently dominate the market, the math is brutal: only 30% of China's wafer market would remain accessible to foreign players. Control the wafer supply, and you control a critical chokepoint in the entire semiconductor stack. Source: Nikkei Asia

🇮🇹🇦🇿 Azerbaijan supplies 16% of Italy's gas. SOCAR just bought 4,500 Italian fuel stations. This is what energy security looks like when Hormuz closes. While the world watches the Strait Italy just rewired its energy architecture northward. The Meloni-Aliyev meeting, what was agreed? First Italian PM visit to Azerbaijan in 13 years. Framed explicitly as a "reliable partnerships" discussion during Middle East instability. → Azerbaijan exported 25 bcm of gas in 2025 7.5 bcm to Italy → Italy: top EU buyer of Azerbaijani gas → TAP cumulative deliveries: 47.5 bcm since startup → TAP covers ~16% of Italy's total gas demand → Both leaders: agreed to push volumes higher via TAP expansion Aliyev: TAP expansion "has already started but must continue" Meloni: Azerbaijani gas has been "decisive for Italy's energy security" and Hormuz makes it more critical still. The infrastructure behind the words The Southern Gas Corridor: Caspian → Azerbaijan → Georgia → Turkey → Greece → Albania → Puglia. TAP annual flows: 9.5 bcm and rising. Recent compressor upgrades: +1.2 bcm/year added capacity. Technical ceiling with full expansion: toward 20 bcm/year. Every bcm that comes through TAP is one bcm that doesn't need to come through Hormuz. The SOCAR downstream move This is where it gets structural. SOCAR Azerbaijan's state oil company just acquired 99.82% of Italiana Petroli (IP): → 10 mt/year refining capacity across 2 Italian refineries → 4,500 service stations across Italy → Aviation fuel, bitumen, logistics assets included → EC approved: February 2026 Gas flows in via TAP. Oil and products flow out via IP's refineries and retail network. SOCAR now has a vertically integrated position inside the EU's 3rd largest economy. Bilateral trade: €10.2 billion in 2025 Italy is Azerbaijan's largest commercial partner. Azerbaijan invested €2.5 billion in Italy. That's an energy alliance formalised by war. The EU wants Russian gas gone. Gulf supply is physically disrupted. The Caspian route via Azerbaijan is the one clean corridor left that avoids both. The Italy-Azerbaijan-SOCAR triangle is the EU's northbound hedge: Caspian gas in via TAP. Azerbaijani oil out via Italian refineries and 4,500 fuel stations. The map of European energy security is being redrawn not in Brussels, but in Baku.

SECRETARY RUBIO: We’re asking the UN to call on Iran to stop blowing up ships, remove the mines, and allow humanitarian relief. If the international community can’t rally behind this and solve something so straightforward, then I don’t know what the utility of the UN system is.

Mark Zuckerberg built a MASSIVE data center in Georgia Just hundreds of yards from people’s homes. Water pressure collapsed. Sinks don’t run. Toilets won’t refill. Homes shake nonstop. Power outages are common A billionaire gets his servers — working families get steamrolled.

George Soros: "I was very much involved in the collapse of the Soviet system. That was my debut as what I call myself a political philanthropist."

Il Parlamento rumeno ha approvato oggi la mozione di sfiducia contro il governo guidato da Ilie Bolojan. La mozione, sostenuta dal Partito Social Democratico (PSD) e dall'AUR - l'alleanza di George Simion, che ha sostenuto Georgescu nel contesto delle elezioni annullate nel 2024 - ha ottenuto 281 voti, superando nettamente la soglia necessaria. Nato appena dieci mesi fa con l’obiettivo di stabilizzare il Paese e mantenere saldo l’ancoraggio all’Unione Europea, l’esecutivo è crollato per le profonde divisioni interne sulla manovra di austerità. Il PSD, che aveva inizialmente sostenuto Bolojan, ha ritirato i suoi ministri dopo aver contestato i tagli alla spesa pubblica, gli aumenti fiscali e la riduzione del personale statale, ritenuti indispensabili per abbassare il deficit e sbloccare i fondi europei. Bolojan, esponente del PNL, ha difeso fino alla fine la necessità di riforme per garantire la stabilità finanziaria e l’arrivo di miliardi di euro dal PNRR. La sua uscita di scena rischia ora di aprire una fase di nuova incertezza. Il presidente Nicușor Dan dovrà avviare le consultazioni per formare un nuovo esecutivo. Sul tavolo ci sono ipotesi di un governo tecnico o di una diversa maggioranza, mentre l’AUR festeggia il risultato e guadagna terreno nei sondaggi. Da RadioRadio

🇨🇳🇮🇷 While soaring oil prices wreak havoc on Europe, China, the planet's hungriest oil importer, has calmly shrugged off the crisis. The reason: a stockpile of over 1 billion barrels built over 15-20 years, driven by a deep-seated energy insecurity that accelerated as U.S.-China tensions rose. China also has 160 million barrels of Iranian crude sitting on tankers offshore right now... Equivalent to roughly 3 months of its Iranian oil demand, bought at around half the market price through independent refineries in Shandong province. Japan imports 90-95% of its crude from the Middle East, South Korea around 70%, China only 54%, which means Beijing's exposure is structurally lower than its neighbors even before the stockpiles are counted. China hasn’t touched its strategic state reserves yet, and analysts say that is the real signal to watch, the moment Beijing starts drawing them down is the moment the buffer runs out. China isn’t immune from this war, it is just better positioned than almost everyone else to wait it out. Beijing spent 2 decades preparing for exactly this moment, and right now that preparation is working. Source: DW News