realridge

@brivael Beautifully true.The west has done so much right and dominates in true power of science, economy and social structure in last 400 years. But one needs to realize the real persistently dominant society that’s China. Why? Meritocracy to its bone,only true religion of its society

Je veux présenter mes excuses, au nom des Français, pour avoir enfanté la French Theory (qui a enfanté la pire des merdes idéologiques : le wokisme). Nous avons donné au monde Descartes, Pascal, Tocqueville. Et puis, dans les ruines intellectuelles de l'après-68, nous avons donné Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze. Trois hommes brillants qui ont fabriqué, dans l'élégance de notre langue, l'arme idéologique qui paralyse aujourd'hui l'Occident. Il faut comprendre ce qu'ils ont fait. Foucault a enseigné que la vérité n'existe pas, qu'il n'y a que des rapports de pouvoir déguisés en savoir. Que la science, la raison, la justice, l'institution médicale, l'école, la prison, la sexualité, tout n'est qu'une mise en scène de la domination. Derrida a enseigné que les textes n'ont pas de sens stable, que tout signifiant glisse, que toute lecture est une trahison, que l'auteur est mort et que le lecteur règne. Deleuze a enseigné qu'il fallait préférer le rhizome à l'arbre, le nomade au sédentaire, le désir à la loi, le devenir à l'être, la différence à l'identité. Pris isolément, ce sont des thèses discutables. Combinées, exportées, vulgarisées, elles forment un système. Et ce système est un poison. Car voici ce qui s'est passé. Ces textes, illisibles en France, ont traversé l'Atlantique. Les départements de Yale, de Berkeley, de Columbia les ont absorbés dans les années 80. Ils y ont trouvé un terreau qui n'existait pas chez nous : le puritanisme américain, sa culpabilité raciale, son obsession identitaire. La French Theory s'est mariée à ce substrat, et l'enfant de ce mariage s'appelle le wokisme. Judith Butler lit Foucault et invente le genre performatif. Edward Said lit Foucault et invente le post-colonialisme académique. Kimberlé Crenshaw hérite du cadre et invente l'intersectionnalité. À chaque étape, la matrice est française : il n'y a pas de vérité, il n'y a que du pouvoir, donc toute hiérarchie est suspecte, toute institution est oppressive, toute norme est violence, toute identité est construite donc négociable, toute majorité est coupable. Voilà comment trois philosophes parisiens, qui n'ont probablement jamais imaginé leurs conséquences pratiques, ont fourni le logiciel d'exploitation à une génération entière d'activistes, de bureaucrates universitaires, de DRH, de journalistes, de législateurs. Voilà comment on a obtenu une civilisation qui ne sait plus dire si une femme est une femme, si sa propre histoire mérite d'être défendue, si le mérite existe, si la vérité se distingue de l'opinion. C'est de la merde pour une raison simple, et il faut la dire calmement. Une civilisation se tient debout sur trois piliers : la croyance qu'il existe une vérité accessible à la raison, la croyance qu'il existe un bien distinct du mal, la croyance qu'il existe un héritage à transmettre. La French Theory a entrepris de dynamiter les trois. Pas par méchanceté. Par jeu intellectuel, par fascination du soupçon, par haine de la bourgeoisie qui les avait nourris. Mais le résultat est là. Une génération entière a appris à déconstruire et n'a jamais appris à construire. Une génération entière sait soupçonner et ne sait plus admirer. Une génération entière voit le pouvoir partout et la beauté nulle part. Je m'excuse parce que nous, Français, avons une responsabilité particulière. C'est notre langue, nos universités, nos éditeurs, notre prestige qui ont donné à ce nihilisme son emballage chic. Sans la légitimité de la Sorbonne et de Vincennes, ces idées n'auraient jamais traversé l'océan. Nous avons exporté le doute comme d'autres exportent des armes. Ce qui se construit maintenant, en silicon valley, dans les labos d'IA, dans les startups, dans les ateliers, dans tous les lieux où des gens fabriquent encore des choses au lieu de les déconstruire, c'est la réponse. Une civilisation se reconstruit par les bâtisseurs, pas par les commentateurs. Par ceux qui croient que la vérité existe et qu'elle vaut qu'on s'y consacre. Par ceux qui assument une hiérarchie du beau, du vrai, du bon, et qui n'ont pas honte de la transmettre. Alors pardon. Et au travail.

Mark Zuckerberg Has Not Earned This Much Money to Spend Three years ago, Mark Zuckerberg renamed his company after a product nobody wanted, lit roughly $90 billion on fire chasing it, and asked shareholders to trust his vision. Reality Labs has now posted cumulative losses north of $90 billion since Meta began breaking it out, and last quarter alone delivered $402 million in revenue against a $4 billion operating loss. The metaverse is, by any honest accounting, the most expensive personal hobby in the history of capitalism. So when the same CEO returns to investors and announces he is now raising 2026 capital expenditures to as much as $145 billion — nearly double last year's spend, and more than the GDP of most countries — the burden of proof should sit squarely on him. On Wednesday's earnings call, an analyst asked Zuckerberg the only question that matters: what signs are you watching to know this investment is paying off? His answer, in full, was "that's a very technical question." That is not an answer. That is a man who does not have one. The contrast with his peers is what makes the moment damning. On the same day, Sundar Pichai walked through Google Cloud's 63% revenue growth, an enterprise backlog of $462 billion, and 800% year-over-year growth in revenue from products built on its generative AI models. Satya Nadella laid out exactly where Microsoft's $190 billion is going — GPUs and CPUs to meet Azure demand he can quantify. Both stocks rose. Meta's fell 9% after hours. The market is not punishing AI capex; it is punishing a CEO who cannot explain his own. And the spillover from his inability to articulate a thesis is not contained to his shareholders. Meta is now an incremental buyer in a hyperscaler cohort whose combined 2026 capex will exceed $600 billion, and the company itself blamed memory component pricing for the upward revision — meaning Zuckerberg's open-ended bid for compute is one of the forces driving up costs for every other firm trying to build a real AI business with a real plan. There is a version of this story where Zuckerberg is right and the rest of us look foolish in five years. Meta's ad business is genuinely strong, the company grew revenue 33% last quarter, and superintelligence, if it arrives, will pay for everything. But "trust me" is not a capital allocation framework, and Zuckerberg has not earned the trust. He missed on the metaverse, then quietly cut Reality Labs' budget by 30% and laid off 8,000 people on May 20 to fund the next bet. He has now told his own employees, on the record, that he does not have a "crystal ball plan for the next three years" — while committing the company to a spending trajectory that requires exactly such a plan to be coherent. Public companies are not personal sandboxes. At some point, a board, a shareholder base, or a regulator is going to insist that the man spending $145 billion of other people's money be able to articulate, in sentences a sixth-grader could follow, what he expects to get for it. Until then, the only honest answer to "should we trust Mark Zuckerberg's vision again" is the one he gave the analyst: that's a very technical question. @nypost @nytimes @WSJbusiness @elonmusk @Meta

@qcapital2020 Isn't everybody in Canada working for the government already? Who do they have to fire? 😶

Holy shit For the non Canadians , this is like Verizon offering to buyout (fire) half their employees. Yeah tell me how AI boosts productivity without hurting jobs again

@DeItaone US surely not executing in the Iran war. But Germany? What does it have that’s competitive in the world now, and in 10 years, other than virtue signaling? Show you know how to execute for the good of your country for its meaningful position in the world

MERZ: U.S. HUMILIATED IN IRAN CONFLICT, WAR LACKS STRATEGY German Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized the U.S. handling of the Iran conflict, saying it entered the war without a clear exit plan, making resolution more difficult. He warned that Iran is “skillfully not negotiating” and accused Tehran of outmaneuvering U.S. diplomacy, saying the American nation is being “humiliated” by Iranian leadership. Merz compared the situation to past U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, calling them cautionary examples of unclear strategy. Germany says it remains ready to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz with mine-clearing support, but only after fighting ends.

@wallstengine Blue Origin definitely should. But that may throw another wrench into $asts launch schedule of 45 sats this in 2026. But better safe than sorry.

Reuters: The FAA ordered a mishap investigation into Blue Origin’s New Glenn 3 second-stage failure after the rocket failed to place $ASTS BlueBird 7 into the correct orbit. Blue Origin will need FAA approval of corrective actions before flights can resume.

@zerohedge Hold on. Wasn’t EU president just cheering Hungary abandoning Russia and choosing Europe last night?

*HUNGARY WON'T STOP BUYING RUSSIAN OIL: MAGYAR *HUNGARY WILL SEEK TO BUY SAFEST, CHEAPEST OIL: MAGYAR *HUNGARY'S MAGYAR HOPES EU LIFTS RUSSIA SANCTIONS ONCE WAR ENDS

@zerohedge Nah. The all powerful Iranian and Houthi navies will come battle it out with the tiny US navy 😂

Next: the US announces a blockade of the Houthi blockade of the US blockade of the Iranian blockade.

@JakeSherman @zerohedge Then tell them they will be all locked in a room until Monday to vote, or they need to vote now. Trust me. Problem solved in no time

🚨THE HOUSE is going to have big problems moving the DHS funding bill today. In the rules for the 119th Congress, House Republicans handcuffed themselves. The majority can not move bills under suspension of the rules on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Hardline conservatives hate moving bills under suspension because it bypasses the rule vote -- where they have the most leverage. Suspensions short-circuit that process but they need 2/3 majority. So @SpeakerJohnson can go to the Rules Committee, where he can try to get a rule -- no sure thing. If he does get one, he can try to pass a rule on the floor -- no sure thing there either with his margins. Rules are party-line votes. Or he can wait until Monday, where he can pass this on suspension. Either way, suspension is going to be controversial. Maybe Trump can convince HFC types to pass a rule. But I don't know that that will work. No SAVE America Act in this. And rules are hard in the best of times.

@shanaka86 Isn’t it a missed opportunity for the other Arab countries to get united once to send it troops to help overthrow this common thorns in the name Iran for them all? Even if a token troop that they send would be impactful on many counts

BREAKING. Iran has just appointed Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, replacing Ali Larijani, who was killed in recent Israeli strikes. IRNA confirmed. WSJ, Reuters, Al Jazeera cross-verified within hours. The appointment is effective immediately. Read the biography and understand what just happened. Zolghadr joined the IRGC during the Iran-Iraq War. Rose through intelligence and special operations. Deputy commander-in-chief of the entire Revolutionary Guards from 1997 to 2005. Deputy interior minister for security. Provincial force commander. Senior SNSC apparatus positions. Every year of his career inside the machine that runs the war, the toll booth, the proxy networks, and the nuclear programme. He did not build relationships with Western intermediaries. He built the infrastructure they are trying to negotiate away. Ali Larijani was the last senior figure who could deliver a deal the IRGC would honour. He had back-channel credibility. He had institutional weight outside the Guards. He is dead. His replacement is a man whose entire professional existence was the Guards. The regime did not appoint a diplomat. It did not appoint a pragmatist. It appointed the deputy commander-in-chief of the organisation that the United States designates as a terrorist entity and gave him the chair that controls nuclear policy, Hormuz strategy, and proxy operations. The SNSC is the decision node. It determines whether the 140 remaining launchers fire or hold. Whether the toll booth widens or closes. Whether the electricity ledger is executed or deferred. Whether Ghalibaf’s back-channel overtures proceed or collapse. Every pathway that Trump, Witkoff, and Kushner were exploring for regime adjustment now runs through a man who spent forty years building the gate they are trying to open. But here is what most analysts will miss. The appointment matters for diplomacy. It barely matters for operations. Because the IRGC runs on the Mosaic Doctrine: 31 autonomous provincial commands, each holding pre-sealed contingency packets with standing orders for every scenario. Hormozgan Provincial Command runs the strait without calling Tehran. Bushehr supports without SNSC approval. The toll collection, the VHF clearance, the mine enforcement, the launcher teams, all operate on orders distributed before the war began. The doctrine was designed in the 2000s for exactly this: a sustained campaign that kills leaders one by one. Its answer was to make leaders optional. The Supreme Leader is dead. The replacement Supreme leader Mojtaba is no where to be seen publicly. The SNSC Secretary was killed. Dozens of commanders are gone. And the toll booth opened this morning, collected yuan, and cleared three ships through the Larak corridor. The machine does not need a driver. Zolghadr’s appointment tells you where the regime’s decision tree landed. Not negotiation. Not compromise. Resistance. Continuity. The IRGC running the IRGC. The man who built the machine now formally supervises it, but the machine was already running without supervision and will continue running regardless. The appointment is the political signal. The Mosaic Doctrine is the operational reality. The signal says: we chose the hardliner. The reality says: it would not have mattered who we chose. The packets are sealed. The commands are autonomous. The toll booth does not check who signed the orders. It checks whether the ship paid in yuan. Arab mediators told the Wall Street Journal today they are skeptical a deal can be reached. Iran is distancing from talks. The pause expires Saturday. And the man who just sat down in the most important security chair in Iran spent his entire life ensuring the machine in that chair’s jurisdiction never needs its occupant to function. The three clocks tick. Nitrogen. Yields. Yuan. The clocks do not read nameplates. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@zerohedge Are they stupid or are they stupid? Think what it will be like when France and Italy have to beg for Iran’s permission again next year, and the years after, whenever Iran demands something?

FRANCE AND ITALY OPEN TALKS WITH IRAN IN HOPE OF SECURING SAFE HORMUZ PASSAGE: FT

@DavidDTawil NYC would have to make Philippine virtual workers qualify for minimum wage too or they are racists! 😀

$30 proposed minimum hourly wage for workers in New York City. The bill would raise NYC minimum wage to the highest in the nation—for any city or state, from $17 to $30 by 2028 for large businesses; firms that employ fewer than 500 people would hit the $30 mark by 2032.

@dampedspring This is like why people buy $goog when they could buy &googl at almost the same price.

Let me summarize my view on $MSTR The entire capital structure is rich to BTC. Except for the fact that the company will issue at par as much of $STRC as investors want to buy AND only issuance or BTC appreciation and sale can pay the dividends. STRC IS the cheapest part of the inflated capital structure. ALL pieces are rich relative to BTC but STRC is less rich than the rest of the preferred and converts and the stock is the MOST rich. Just buy $IBIT folks. That's what @saylor is doing

@notreload_ai For a guy that’s really supposed to be smart that’s acting ridiculously dumb. The whole brain is blocked by the tiny cells for posturing and virtual signaling.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the company will sue the Pentagon after the U.S. Defense Department labeled Anthropic a national-security “supply chain risk.” He says it only limits use of the AI Claude in Defense contracts. anthropic.com/news/where-sta…

$baba had been reporting Q3 earnings in February in the last five years. It's really strange they haven't even announced a date for this year. They don't need that long to make up a story if the results are bad. Still it's weird.

@unusual_whales Israel is bombing Tehran and Iran is now talking about embassy in Beirut. This is really an unbelievably serious country ……

Iran says it will target Israeli embassies worldwide if Israel attacks Iranian embassy in Beirut.

@DeItaone Wow. Does he get paid the big bucks for that incredibly deep, deep, deep insight?

DEUTSCHE BANK CEO: IRAN CRISIS WILL HAVE ECONOMIC IMPACTS THE LONGER IT LASTS

@endless_frank And especially for EU, is not like they have any other options (yes they do theoretically, but they won’t with Musk).

$ASTS Times like these are what separates the have’s from the have not’s. This is when the renters puke their positions and the investors add. Always has been and always will be this way. AST is a defense company, let’s be honest. If we flatten Iran our satellite use cases grow. Whether you like that or not. Our end consumer markets aren’t affected at all by this either, so it’s just another opportunity to buy a dip induced by geopolitics.

Just a reminder $asts MSCI index inclusion rebalance is today at close

@zerohedge Nah. It's because $nvda financials are running on $intc CPU, and $ibm DOS OS

BBG: "There’s a lot of speculation here on why NVDA is late. Some folks saying that it’s usually a sign of impending bad news. Other pattern recognizers saying it’s the herald of good tidings." that pretty much covers it

Well. Even drug dealers need to scrape by by selling off stuff on eBay. Time is tough......