Thursday morning #headlines recap
Twin M7.2/M7.5 earthquakes flattened northern Venezuela overnight, with USGS models pointing at five-figure casualties while the official count sits at 32; meanwhile a powerful 7.2 magnitude earthquake strikes off northern Japan - no tsunami warning is triggered. Maybe they’re trying out a new software patch on the earthquake machines?
IRGC Navy threatens vessels using any route but Iran's, rejecting Oman's US-backed corridor. Iran says passage is "only possible" via its announced routes, coordination on Channel 16 mandatory, "violator vessels will be dealt with”. At the same time the UN is running a gradual, coordinated evacuation of 11,000+ sailors trapped on ships behind the strait for months, via an Oman "temporary corridor”.
In other Middle East news… Trump reportedly told Israel its "period of operating without restrictions is over," per Israeli Channel 13. Notable given continued IDF strikes in Lebanon. Like telling a pitbull to stop biting someone…
Market summary: the multi-day stories all resolved violently in the same direction at once: gold lost $4,000 and silver lost $60, Brent erased its entire February war premium, and Micron's blowout earnings detonated after the close. The connecting tissue is a hawkish-Warsh dollar squeeze, not new news, but the magnitudes are.
Trump told the DOJ to probe Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP for "gouging," arguing pump prices should be at $2.25. You should have thought about pump prices before you started your jew war fat boy.
Tech update: Anthropic accused Alibaba's Qwen of "adversarial distillation" via thousands of fake accounts and ~28.8M exchanges; Google lost two more senior AI researchers to Anthropic; SpaceX has shed ~$900B from its $2.97T peak.
Russian forces control 80–95% of Kostyantynivka, clearing the rail station and central districts, with Druzhkivka next in line. A significant part of the Ukrainian garrison has already retreated to Druzhkivka, now under heavy fire. Moscow's main oil refinery, ~30–35% of the capital's fuel supply, is expected offline into 2027 after Ukrainian drone strikes, with US intelligence reportedly supporting the targeting. The report of US/Trump support for attacks is coming from Ukrainian officials, likely they’re just playing “let’s you and him fight” between US and Russia.
Editor’s note: there’s been a sharp increase in “two moar weeks” stories over the past few days. I will not dignify them by reporting the specifics, but there does seem to be a disturbance in the farce.
Angie Baez - of trashcan-stealing fame - has her resume posted online. She got a C-suite position at the world’s largest bank with only an associates degree from a community college. Commenters note that a White American needs at least a masters to apply for a tech support job paying $20/hour. DEI status confirmed.
France confirmed its first Ebola case. Import diseased animals and this is the result…
President Donald Trump is planning to move ahead with the sale of dozens of jet engines to Turkey worth hundreds of millions of dollars, despite objections from some members of the US Congress (aka AIPAC members). If the jews are seething I’m counting it as good news.
Here’s a reminder to frens that even the simplest of tools can be useful when properly employed…