Emerging and Submerging world. I read between the lines. * All views are strictly my own
Surrey/UAE/Koya
Joined November 2014
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MacroKurd retweeted
Fuel unrest has erupted in Iran as furious drivers begin blocking highways over gasoline shortages.
On Friday night, residents reportedly parked their cars and blocked Rajaei Highway outside the Aftab Derakhshan gas station in Bandar Abbas after stations ran short of fuel.
Videos show crowds gathering and traffic brought to a halt. The unrest remains localized for now, but gasoline has triggered nationwide upheaval before.
In November 2019, a sudden fuel-price increase ignited protests across Iran within days. The Islamic Republic shut down the internet and opened fire on demonstrators. Amnesty International documented at least 304 deaths, while Reuters reported that approximately 1,500 people were killed.
That history explains why the regime is tightening access gradually instead of announcing one dramatic nationwide increase.
Emergency station cards are being withdrawn across multiple provinces, forcing drivers to depend on personal fuel cards. After the subsidized quotas are exhausted, additional gasoline costs 10,000 tomans per litre.
The regime calls this “demand management” and an effort to combat smuggling. In practice, it is transferring the cost of fuel shortages and financial collapse onto ordinary Iranians.
The contradiction is explosive: Iran possesses some of the world’s largest oil reserves, yet people in Hormozgan—a province containing major refineries—are struggling to obtain gasoline.
Fuel shortages affect nearly everyone. They prevent people from reaching work, operating taxis, transporting goods and earning a living. Local anger can therefore spread far faster than protests confined to one profession or social group.
The Bandar Abbas blockade does not yet constitute a national uprising. But the Islamic Republic knows that Iran’s largest protest waves have often begun with an economic grievance before rapidly becoming a political revolt against the entire system.
The first highway has been blocked.
In Iran, history shows how quickly a gasoline crisis can become something much larger.
MacroKurd retweeted
It is a difficult time to be Iraq. The challenges ahead are enormous, and Baghdad may soon find itself dealing with the consequences of a regional war it had little ability to influence.
Been long time I want to write about that… so here we go🧵
MacroKurd retweeted
A congresswoman just told Elon Musk "See you soon."
So let's compare résumés. Because that's really what this is about.
Elon Musk moved to North America at 17. He built Zip2, then PayPal, then put almost everything he had into two companies every expert said would die: a rocket company and an electric car company. In 2008 both nearly did. He went all in anyway.
Today SpaceX lands orbital boosters and flies them again like airliners, something NASA, Russia, Europe and China considered impossible or uneconomical for 60 years. It launches most of the mass sent to orbit by all of humanity combined. It's the reason America stopped renting seats on Russian rockets to reach its own space station. Starlink brings internet to Ukrainian trenches, Amazon villages and disaster zones. Tesla forced every carmaker on Earth to go electric. Neuralink is letting paralyzed people control computers with their minds.
And to the "billionaires don't pay their fair share" crowd: in 2021 he paid over $11 billion in taxes. Widely reported as the largest individual tax bill in American history. One man. One year.
His stated goal is to make life multiplanetary so that consciousness doesn't die on a single rock. You can think that's crazy. He has delivered on enough "crazy" that betting against him has become a bad habit.
Now Yassamin Ansari.
Stanford, international relations. Intern for Nancy Pelosi. Climate advisor at the UN. Phoenix City Council. Won her congressional primary by 39 votes. A whole career spent inside institutions that run on other people's money. Never built a product. Never had a customer. Never faced a market.
The day after her party won Congress, what's her top priority for day one? Cheaper housing? Energy? Competing with China?
No. Pause advanced AI. Ban "superintelligence."
The bill she backs freezes any model trained above 10^25 operations until a brand-new cabinet-level Department of AI gets staffed and writes its rules. Violators face up to 20 years in prison.
Let that sink in. The industry that, by one Oxford Economics estimate, drives about a third of recent US growth, frozen by people who have never trained a model, while waiting for a federal agency that doesn't exist yet. Beijing couldn't have written it better.
And yes, Elon has warned about AI risk for a decade. That's exactly the point. His answer to risk was to build, compete and put better systems in the arena. Hers is a committee, a freeze and prison terms. One looks at a hard problem and builds. The other looks at a hard problem and asks for a permit to stop everyone else.
Then the cherry on top: her reply to the man who built the rockets is "See you soon." Coming from someone whose only real power is the ability to stop others from building.
This is the real fault line of our time. Not left vs right. Builders vs administrators of envy. A system that selects people who have never created anything and gives them authority over the people who create everything. A political class that turns resentment into legislation and calls it "safety."
I'm French. I've watched this movie. Europe wrote the world's most ambitious AI rulebook. Now count how many of the world's top AI models are European.
I genuinely hope humanity grows out of this model. A civilization where its most mediocre managers summon its most extraordinary builders with a "see you soon" is a civilization working against itself.
"Brave New World" is right. Except the dystopia isn't the machine. It's the committee.
MacroKurd retweeted
Todo mundo discutindo QUEM vai ser o próximo ministro da Fazenda. Durigan fica? Vem o Alckmin? O Fonteles?
Samuel Pessôa cravou: vocês estão discutindo a pergunta errada.
Para ele, pouco importa o nome que vai sentar naquela cadeira. O que decide o juro não é o ministro. É a conta do gasto público.
O juro no Brasil é alto não porque o Banco Central erra. É alto porque o gasto primário cresce sistematicamente mais rápido que a economia, numa economia que já roda à plena carga.
Nos anos Lula, o gasto primário real cresceu, em média, 7,8% ao ano. A economia cresceu 4%. Quase o dobro. Quando o Estado avança sobre a economia nessa velocidade, ano após ano, a pressão inflacionária vira permanente. E o juro alto, também.
O problema, é que o presidente aparentemente não liga uma coisa à outra (não enxerga o gasto como causa do juro).
Dá pra aumentar imposto, cortar subsídio, melhorar o primário. Tudo isso ajuda na dívida e no risco-país. Mas, pra o juro real cair de verdade, só existe um caminho: o gasto parar de crescer mais que a economia.
Ou seja: a bola não está com a Fazenda. Está com o Planalto.
MacroKurd retweeted
🇨🇳 🇮🇷 Beijing will soon send Middle East envoy Zhai Jun to Iran, Oman and Saudi Arabia to promote peace talks and de-escalation, China’s Foreign Ministry says.
MacroKurd retweeted
Iraq: October crude/co supply recovered to ~ 4 MBPD (~ -300 KBPD pre-war) and exports are now > 3.0 MBPD. And its not all PG flows, it is also incremental Kirkuk loadings from Ceyhan. Another fascinating recovery like KSA and UAE, using a viable bypass.
MacroKurd retweeted
'I don't think employers are working people.'
@CamillaTominey grills Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Emma Reynolds MP, over whether Labour has breached its manifesto pledge in the Budget.
📺 Freeview 236, Sky 512, Virgin 604
MacroKurd retweeted
“Iran is the gas station of Xi Jinping.”
Richard Miniter just claimed that Trump’s war in Iran is actually “designed to prevent a war” between China and Taiwan.
And he told me that Chinese military documents argue for “war in Taiwan in 2027.”
“That’s next year.”
Iran, he says, provides China with “below market fuel, oil and natural gas.”
“And it needs that fuel to maintain its economy.”
“How would you prevent China from invading Taiwan and forcing the United States to fight across the vast and cold Pacific Ocean?”
“If you take out their source of oil and natural gas and other energy products from Iran, it’s not able to have this war over here in Taiwan.”
“You can prevent a war in the Far East by taking out a regime that deserves to go anyway, from the Trump perspective.”
“I don’t think the American public has been presented with the global benefits of the Trump strategy.”
MacroKurd retweeted
Israel election.
Whoever wins, we look forward to Von de Leyen and Carney declaring it a victory for democracy.
Taken literally, any free and fair result is a win for democracy.
Leaders don't use the phrase literally, though. It's diplomatic code to signal a preference.
Lula is a vocal critic of Trump, and his win comes as relief to those worried about growing US influence in Latin America. Carney and von der Leyen would hardly have used the same words about a Flávio win.
MacroKurd retweeted
ELEIÇÃO ROUBADA NO BRASIL? 🇧🇷
BRAZIL ELECTION STEAL? 🇺🇸
🇧🇷Este professor de matemática aponta que os dados divulgados pelo TSE na noite da eleição, no Brasil, revelam padrões de alterações algorítmicas que prejudicaram @FlavioBolsonaro à medida que a apuração avançava. Ele estima que Flavio deveria ter vencido com cerca de 65% dos votos.
🇺🇸This mathematics professor shows the data that came out of the TSE on election night in Brazil shows patterns of algorithmic shifts that penalized @FlavioBolsonaro as the counts came in. He projects that Flavio should have won by about 65% of the vote.
MacroKurd retweeted
Ojalá Lula logre sacar a Brasil del desastre económico que le dejó el gobierno anterior.
MacroKurd retweeted
Para Lula chegar aos 64,2 milhões de votos, ele teria que ter:
- Mantido 100% dos votos que recebeu no primeiro turno
- Conquistado 100% dos 3 milhões de eleitores que deixaram de se abster
- Recebido 100% dos 1,8 milhão de votos que antes foram anulados
- Conquistado cerca de 60% dos votos dos outros candidatos (Augusto Cury, Renan Santos, Caiado e Zema)
MacroKurd retweeted
So apparently 213 cities that voted for Flávio Bolsonaro somehow voted for Lula in the second.
That’s … what the fuck. Yeah. Fuck Lula.
Free Brazil.
213 cidades que escolheram Flávio no 1º turno deram vitória a Lula no 2º
cnnbrasil.com.br/eleicoes/21…
MacroKurd retweeted
¡EL AJUSTE FISCAL YA ESTÁ EN MARCHA! ¡$13,8 BILLONES MENOS EN EL GASTO DEL ESTADO!
Con la firma del Decreto 1585, el Gobierno de la Patria Milagro concreta el primer gran ajuste fiscal de 2026:
$3 billones menos en funcionamiento: reducción de contratos de prestación de servicios y eliminación de compras innecesarias.
$4 billones menos en el servicio de la deuda, gracias a la mejora en la tasa de cambio.
$6,8 billones menos en contratación que no alcanzará a ejecutarse o que no responde a las prioridades nacionales.
¡Y ESTO APENAS COMIENZA!
Continuaré tomando decisiones para reducir el gasto, eliminar los despilfarros y poner en orden las finanzas públicas.
Los recursos de los colombianos deben administrarse con austeridad, responsabilidad y transparencia. ¡El Estado tiene que aprender a gastar menos y mejor!
¡Bienvenidos a la Patria Milagro!
¡Firme por la Patria!
¡Que viva Cristo Rey!
(A.D.L.E) 🇨🇴 🐅
(ADLE) 🇨🇴🐯
MacroKurd retweeted
Iran is without a doubt a grave threat to the State of Israel. Its pursuit of nuclear weapons and development of ballistic missiles capable of striking in the heart of our country cannot be allowed to continue.
But does that mean Israel needs to attack right now, less than a week before an election?
The answer is that none of us really know. Only a handful of people have access to the intelligence needed to determine whether the threat is immediate or whether an attack can wait. If Iran is building a nuclear bomb right now, Israel obviously needs to act, regardless of the election. But if the threat will be no different a week from now, the government needs to exercise extreme caution for two reasons.
The first is obvious: A military operation could disrupt the election and politicians have a responsibility to protect the democratic process and must be careful when taking action that could undermine it.
The second is more complicated and potentially just as damaging. Whatever Netanyahu decides, a significant percentage of Israelis will suspect that his motives are political. Even if an attack is entirely justified, many will believe it was designed to influence the election.
This is the reality of the deep crisis of trust in Israel today. If Netanyahu orders an attack, he will need to make a compelling case to the Israeli public, knowing that much of the country may not believe him regardless of the evidence.
And that is the danger. An operation meant to strengthen Israel’s security could end up eroding public trust in the government and the IDF.
Iran is a threat that Israel cannot ignore. But the timing of military action matters, especially when the country is just days away from an election.
MacroKurd retweeted
Turkey under Erdogan’s vile discourse shows its true colors. Years of spewing hatred and praising terrorists. This is the end result:
Mobbing an Israeli-Turkish woman shopping in Istanbul
If you wanted to make a cult classic featuring Islamist zombies, Turkey is central casting
