Mark Philipsen

As AI becomes more productive, people will have less need for government. The necessities of life ( including health care, food, housing, and elder care ) will be nearly free. In a sane world, government would then shrink in size. My hunch is that the people in this photo will not surrender their power easily.

Europe's biggest technology companies call for a United Europe. CEOs of Airbus, ASML, Ericsson, Mistral AI, Nokia, SAP, and Siemens: "Let's act as One Europe, Now"

@SawyerMerritt I used to love shopping for cars. Looked forward to the annual auto show. Memorized the Consuumer Reports auto issue. Now that I’ve experienced FSD V14 in my Model Y, all that has stopped. I’ll never buy anything but a Tesla. No need to consider anything else.

Lexus has just officially unveiled their new all-electric three row SUV for the US, the Lexus TZ. • Range: Up to 300 miles • Two battery options: 77 kWh & 96 kWh • Peak charging speed: 150kW • 10-80% charge in 35 minutes • NACS charge port • Fake gear shifts with gas engine sounds through the speakers • 3,500 lb towing capacity • 0-60mph: 5.1s • Up to 420 hp • Quietest cabin among Lexus SUVs • Forged Bamboo interior trim sourced from Shikoku Island • Second-row captain’s chairs • Front passenger & second-row ventilated seats with power ottomans • One-touch folding second- and third-row seats • In-cabin fragrance • Full-screen navigation in digital gauge cluster • Six Japanese-inspired ambient lighting themes • 21-speaker audio system • Heated seats in all seating rows • Available Dynamic Rear Steering (up to 4 degrees rear-wheel steering) • 0.27 drag coefficient • Five regenerative braking levels adjustable via paddle shifters • Lexus-first 2-in-1 charging port with side-by-side AC/DC connectors • AC external power supply capability • Can't self-drive, but has driver assist features • Overall length: 200.8" • Wheelbase: 120.1 inches • Cargo capacity with rear seats up: 13.8 cubic feet • No frunk Vehicle goes on sales in the U.S. at the end of 2026. Pricing will be announced later. I've attached a lot more photos in the thread below:

Cuba has tremendous economic potential. There is great wealth in the Cuban American community that would quickly be invested in Cuba. Resorts and Casinos are an obvious first industry. Also, residential real estate development. Yes, Billions would be needed for infrastructure , but there should be a way to fund this with private investment.

TRUMP SAYS US WILL BE TAKING OVER CUBA "ALMOST IMMEDIATELY"

@Vikings If Caleb stays healthy, and reaches his potential, our defense will be top 5. If KOC learns how to use the run game, and Kyler plays like his younger self, our offense will be top 10. That’s a lot of ifs.

#Vikings fans respond to the 2026 NFL Draft in this week's mailbag. 📰: mnvkn.gs/4cB6qRU

@alsahuquillo @Ryan4Tesla7 @JoeJustice Could they be setting Cybercab up for AI5 ?

The Cybercab has a cooling system WAY bigger than expected. @JoeJustice (ex-Tesla, EV racer & agile manufacturing expert): "You'd expect the cooling system to be smaller… but it's much bigger. This is a data center on wheels." Even when not driving passengers, it will be running maximum useful compute. Data center architecture, applied to a car for the first time. 🤯 Thanks to @JoeTegtmeyer for the photo that made this possible 🙏 Full interview dropping soon 👇 #Cybercab #Tesla

@DanielLDavis1 @zerohedge This is not a negotiation. JD is going to make an offer that the regime can’t refuse. You have 24 hours to open Hormuz, or we shut off electricity in Iran for the next 5 years.

@TheStudyofWar I’m guessing that neither side wants to reveal the 10 point plan. It would open them up to criticism from opposition within each of their countries. That would poison the talks. Better to negotiate, then defend the final compromise.

MORE: Iran has continued to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz despite the ceasefire, which is making vessels reticent to transit the strait. Iran is levying these threats so that it can extract tolls on traffic through an international waterway. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains significantly low amid Iran’s lingering threats and uncertainty over a fragile ceasefire. Commercial maritime tracking data showed only five Iranian‑flagged cargo vessels entered the strait, while just three international oil tankers, six international cargo vessels, and one unknown Iranian-flagged vessel exited via Iran’s alternative route between April 7 at 2:00 PM ET and April 8 at 2:00 PM ET. The S&P Global Market Intelligence recorded that Iran permitted only four vessels to transit on April 7, the lowest daily total so far in April. Major shipping companies, including Maersk and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, continue to suspend or tightly limit transits, citing the absence of clear rules and security guarantees. Shipping and maritime intelligence executives told the Financial Times that daily traffic has fallen to just 10 to 15 vessels, compared with roughly 135 per day before the crisis. Around 800 tankers are now waiting to transit, with an estimated 300 to 400 vessels effectively stranded inside the Persian Gulf.

@munster_gene We’ll get a new, small Tesla with a steering wheel only after Cybercab has flooded the addressable market. Maybe 2035. And, Tesla may have spun off its car sales division by then.

Reuters reports $TSLA is in early development for a new entry-level vehicle, roughly 5% smaller than the Cybercab. It reportedly has NOT received a green light yet, and no timing was given. My first reaction was click bait. My take: We’ve seen two hints about new models this month: today’s Reuters story and Elon’s March 25th comment that “something way cooler than a minivan is coming.” What is more clear is Tesla is working on new vehicles. My guess, we see an announcement in 2027 pointing toward a 2028 release.

The minimum goals are - Regime: Remain in power, control the flow of oil - US: No nukes, no proxies - Israel: Regime change, no missiles, no proxies, no nukes - Rest of World: Oil flows freely I don’t see a negotiated outcome, only a military one. There is no solution that would satisfy all parties.

The ceasefire with Iran is barely 12 hours old and already disputed on every front. I pulled the exact answers from today’s White House (Karoline Leavitt) + Pentagon (Pete Hegseth) briefings on the biggest points of confusion 🧵

@okaythenfuture You don’t know anything about Chinese demographics, do you ? By 2040, the average age in China will be ancient. It will be one gigantic nursing home.

Your kids are going to grow up in a world where China will be their model society in terms of technology, commerce, culture, and even governance. They will idolize and idealize the place as a fantasy wonderland and society. They will want to study there, visit there, and even move there(sadly for them, most aren't getting in.) You see how crazy the Japan simping is right now? 40 years past Japan's economic peak? The China simping will be 10X that level by 2040. Because China has won the end of history.

@Bannons_WarRoom Destroy their energy infrastructure and we win, and millions of innocent Iranians die a slow death. Is Trump ready to cross that line ?

🚨BREAKING: The Israeli paper, Haaretz, is just reporting now that the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard is not prepared to agree to any concessions as part of a deal to end the war.

The only way to win is to crush the Iranian economy by destroying their ability to export oil. That would deprive the regime of the ability to fund the IRGC and proxies. It would also cause the slow death of millions of Iranian civilians. Is Trump willing to do that ? He isn’t. That would be the end of his reputation and legacy.

1 The defining deliberations of this war aren't between the US and Iran, but Trump and himself. He’s vacillated between walking away and promising to bomb Iran to the Stone Age. Iran has been consistent: Its ideology is resistance, its strategy is chaos, its endgame is survival.

@SawyerMerritt As a shareholder, I’d rather see them focus on making a bazillion Cybercabs.

If Tesla offered this SUV lineup in the US: • Model Y (188" long, two rows) • Model Y L (196" long, three rows) • Cyber SUV (~210" length, same as GMC Yukon, three rows) This would be one hell of an all-electric self-driving capable SUV lineup that would serve the needs of families of pretty much all sizes.

The US could neutralize Iran forever by setting Kharg island on fire. No Kharg, no revenue for Iran. Can’t pay the IRGC. Can’t buy weapons. However, that essentially would be a death sentence for 40 million innocent Iranians. It would also throw most of the world into a deep recession, if not depression. My guess is Trump finds a half measure short of this. Destroy key pipelines that would temporarily shut down oil flow. Take out some, but not all, power generation stations. Take control of Kharg without destroying it. Something like that.

@AmericanDebunk These are the emerging contours of a new global order. Trump isn’t just venting, he’s signaling the shift. The era of freely provided public goods, like secure open trade routes, is ending. What was once guaranteed will now come at a price.

This post by Trump is pre-framing what's to come. Read along and you'll start to see it too. When Trump tells the UK to "go to the Strait and just TAKE IT," the surface read is that he's venting at allies who didn't show up. But the deeper move is priming the the public (and world) with a new mental frame: the Strait of Hormuz is not Iranian sovereign territory anymore. It's available real estate. It's takeable. Anyone with courage can have it. That's a massive Overton Window shift delivered, in a tweet, as an insult to the UK. A year ago "America controls the Strait of Hormuz" sounded like some twisted fantasy. Today Trump is telling Britain to go grab it themselves like it's a parking spot. In a few weeks, Trump has normalized the concept of Western control over the Strait so thoroughly that full US seizure now looks like the modest option compared to what he's suggesting allies do on their own. This is intentional. The persuasion mechanics here are priming plus pre-selling. Whatever the eventual deal includes (US Navy permanent presence, joint patrols, Iranian withdrawal from mining infrastructure) the public will accept it because Trump already told them the Strait is there for the taking. Your subconscious mind has already been primed to accept it. This "psychological baseline" is going to influence Trump-Iran negotiations. Best believe it. "The hard part is done" works the same way. He's managing public fatigue. It translates to "we won, relax, this is cleanup". This keeps approval from eroding while the Pakistan talks drag through April. Trump isn't describing reality. He's installing it. Say the Strait is takeable enough times and it becomes takeable in the public mind. It's been 10 years of Trump and he still leaves me in awe with his persuasion.

@anishmoonka I was at the Apollo 17 launch. Two miles away. Ground shook. Thunderous sound. Bright as day ( only night launch ). Gave me chills. Still does.

If you're under 53 years old, you have never once been alive while a human was farther than 250 miles from Earth. Tonight, four astronauts are heading 252,000 miles out. That's a thousand times farther than any person has gone in your lifetime. The 250-mile ceiling is where the International Space Station floats. Every astronaut since December 1972 has been stuck in that zone. Spacewalks, science experiments, cool photos from orbit, sure. But nobody left the neighborhood. The last crew to go farther was Apollo 17. December 1972. Nixon was president. The internet didn't exist. Cell phones were 11 years away. The youngest member of that crew is now 90 years old. The farthest any human has ever been from Earth is 248,655 miles. The Apollo 13 crew set that number in 1970, and they didn't mean to. Their oxygen tank blew up, and the emergency route home took them farther out than anyone before or since. Tonight's crew will break that record on purpose. And the crew itself. Victor Glover becomes the first Black astronaut to leave Earth's neighborhood. Christina Koch becomes the first woman. Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian fighter pilot, becomes the first non-American to do so. When they come home, they'll slam into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph, faster than any human has ever traveled. The Moon's south pole has ice. Water ice, sitting in craters so deep that sunlight hasn't hit them in billions of years. A 2024 NASA study found way more of it than anyone expected. You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which gives you rocket fuel, breathable air, and drinking water, all made on the Moon instead of hauled up from Earth. George Sowers at Colorado School of Mines calculated that Moon-made fuel could shave $12 billion off a single trip to Mars. The Moon is a gas station on the road to Mars. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced last week a $20 billion plan to build a permanent base at the South Pole over the next seven years, with landings every six months. China is developing its own lunar lander and spacesuit, aiming for a crewed landing by 2030. The Artemis program has burned through $93 billion so far, and the first actual surface landing is penciled in for 2028. There's a real question of who gets there first this time around. Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon in December 1972 as part of Apollo 17. He's 90. Asked about it this week, he sounded pretty relaxed. "Mars is attainable," he said. "We're humans. That's what we've always done."

@AJABreaking @zerohedge Reminiscent of the end of the Korean conflict. Shaping the battlefield prior to negotiations.

عاجل | القناة ١٤ الإسرائيلية: الهجوم الإيراني على إسرائيل حاليا هو الأوسع منذ بداية الحرب

@ICannot_Enough I rode in an elevator with a human operator in the mid 1980s in Fort Worth. The company had 2 elevators, one manually operated. The elderly operator was allowed to keep his job until he chose to retire. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Nobody is skeptical of autonomous elevators because nobody alive today was even around to see a human elevator operator in real life before the last one got laid off. Automation is far safer.

There are two barriers to a merger in the near future: 1. TSLA will be undervalued until after Robotaxi hits some sort of scale. Shareholders ( including me ) know it isn’t in their interest to merge until then. 2. SpaceX does a LOT of business with the US Department of War. Tesla does a LOT of business in China and employs thousands of Chinese engineers. The US wouldn’t want to bring down barriers between the entities.

I have no opinion on whether a Tesla-SpaceX merger will happen, but when you rely on Reuters rumors from“people familiar with the matter”, it’s not a positive sign. I don’t understand the obsession with the merger. They’re both great companies. I don’t see why they need to merge. Of course I’ll support Elon and the teams whatever they decide.

Eventually, but not soon. Among other things, it won’t happen until Tesla stock reflects the widespread rollout of Robotaxi. Large Tesla shareholders wouldn’t vote yes until that happens. Also, the US is unlikely to approve a merger of a large defense contractor if Chinese engineers have access to that technology.

Here is further proof SpaceX and Tesla will inevitably become one $TSLA

@zerohedge If the movies were more entertaining or inspirational, we’d watch the Oscars. They no longer entertain or inspire, they preach and posture. Not a hint of self awareness or humanity.

The Oscars Died Last Weekend...Did Anyone Even Notice? zerohedge.com/markets/oscars…