“Genitals stolen in Africa :: Will Bitcoin die? :: Issues gold, silver and bitcoin could face :: Mark Challenges Rich E Rich on Bitcoin maximalism :: Shopping malls making a resurgence? :: What demographic stealing from malls? :: Learned helplessness and the scientist that helped the CIA to torture :: Caller said repeal the 19th amendment and right to vote for Italians :: How the cops stole Bonnie’s spit :: They’re putting toilets in cars :: 62 year old won the right to wear a penis costume in public :: You deserve your whole penis :: James Wittekind calls breaking Mark’s restraining order :: Invideo.io for making AI videos :: 2026-04-19 :: Hosts: Bonnie, Mark Edge, Colin, Rich E Rich.” (04/19/26)
“The recent ceasefire between Israel and Iran may have paused the most intense phase of direct military confrontation, but it has done nothing to resolve the deeper questions about Middle Eastern stability that have emerged since October 7, 2023. Behind the temporary calm lies a profound transformation in Israeli strategic thinking, one that has moved from containment to active regional reorganization. Israel is not a normal democracy that abides by the rule of law or legal restraint. It is very much an expansionist state with bold ambitions and a demonstrated willingness to break international law. The events of the past two years have made this reality impossible to ignore.” (04/20/26)
“Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) added 34,164 bitcoin to its treasury last week at an average price of about $74,395 per coin, for a total cost of roughly $2.54 billion, according to a Monday filing. The purchases bring the company’s total holdings to 815,061 BTC, acquired for approximately $61.56 billion at an average cost basis of $75,527. With BTC currently trading at around $75,000, Strategy’s stash is currently break-even. Strategy is the world’s largest publicly listed bitcoin holder. It began acquiring BTC as a balance sheet asset in 2020.” (04/20/26)
“Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down from the job that he inherited from the late Steve Jobs, ending a nearly 15-year reign that saw the company’s market value soar by more than $3.6 trillion during an iPhone-fueled era of prosperity. Cook, 65, will turn the CEO duties to Apple’s head of hardware engineering, John Ternus, on September 1 while remaining involved with the Cupertino, California, company as executive chairman. That’s similar to the transitions made by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Netflix’s Reed Hastings after they ended their highly successful tenures as CEO.” (04/20/26)
“The conservative-populist movement that Trump summoned has dominated the American right for a decade, but when he leaves office three years hence, either something new will take its place or a period of incoherence will commence. Right-wingers in recent years have propounded several alternatives: Catholic ‘integralism,’ which seems unable to garner much support in our secular, erstwhile Protestant nation; ‘post-liberalism,’ an empty signifier and mere negation; white nationalism, a dead end; CEO-style monarchism, which Trumpism has in effect only further delegitimized (hence the ‘No Kings’ protests); and so on. This essay proposes and adumbrates a different ideology, which I believe could not only glue together a winning coalition but also guide responsible governance: right-liberalism.” (04/20/26)
Source: Grist
by Rebecca Egan McCarthy & Kate Yoder
“The future looked dire for renewable energy in the United States last spring. Republicans in Congress started gutting the Inflation Reduction Act, forcing its generous tax credits for wind and solar into an early retirement. The Interior Department then rolled out a series of byzantine regulations aimed at restricting clean energy on federal land. Some feared those regulations would curb wind and solar development on private land, too. Although these restrictions do seem to have hindered the wind industry, there are some signs that its fortunes are changing. But a year later, solar continues to boom.” (04/20/26)
“Jay Foreman said he’s ‘locked and loaded’ for the U.S. government’s April 20 launch of a new system to refund up to $166 billion in illegally collected tariffs, but he and many other importers are realistic that much could still go wrong. ‘You have to be worried about what they could possibly do to jam things up,’ said the CEO of toymaker Basic Fun, which sells Tonka trucks, Care Bears and K’Nex construction toys. The refund system is the latest twist in a drawn-out battle over tariffs collected over the past year …. The constantly shifting tariffs roiled global business as companies rushed to shift supply chains to avoid them as well as figure out who would ultimately pay the taxes. The Supreme Court in February struck down the tariffs President Trump pursued under a law meant for use in national emergencies, handing the president a stinging defeat.” (04/20/26)
“For nearly a century, mainstream American cinema has regurgitated, devoured, and re-regurgitated the same foaming popcorn mythology in which it is presented as basic common sense that America is always the good guy and that every foreigner with a funny accent who stands in his way is a totally otherized human bowling pin who exists for the sole purpose of being obliterated again and again and again in a voluptuous bacchanalia of endless machine gun barrages and bottomless stacks of bloodless corpses. Your average American is raised on a steady diet of this schlock with a side of paint-by-the-numbers public school history teachers who can turn any warzone into a beige labyrinth of names and dates to memorize for next week’s ludoviko scantron test.” (04/19/26)
