SCMP - Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens: city’s men get one back on Japan to win third Melrose Claymores

Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens: city’s men get one back on Japan to win third Melrose Claymores https://www.scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/3350633/cathay/hsbc-hong-kong-sevens-citys-men-get-one-back-japan-win-3rd-melrose-claymores Sent from my iPad

SCMP - Hong Kong Sevens a treat for fans but local restaurants hungry for more trade

Hong Kong Sevens a treat for fans but local restaurants hungry for more trade https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3350630/hong-kong-sevens-treat-fans-local-restaurants-hungry-more-trade Sent from my iPad

America is winning in Iran. And the Left hates it

 

Historian, Classicist, Stanford Hoover Institute Fellow, Victory Davis-Hanson, talking of the winning going on in Iran. 

But the wish for losing -- of America losing, of the West losing -- the wish for "Gleeful Defeat" amongst the Left and other Trump haters. Who hate a man more than they love their country. 

Phuket, Thailand. 2011

 

Anchored on our boat Xena, at Karong Beach, Phuket. Looking west over an Andaman Sea sunset.

Global Gender Divide

Just posting for Reference.

From a Financial Times article a few years ago by John Burn-Murdoch. It's here but paywalled.

It's a trend everywhere. Women going Left, men going (or staying) Right. 

More evidence: Young women are trending liberal. Young men are not, The Hill. 

Waymo is cooked! Tesla’s cooking!

Smooth, cool dude Tesla > carbuncled Waymo

Haven’t heard of Waymo? 

It’s a driverless taxi. Currently operating in a number of cities in the U.S. and expanding. It’s owned by Google. Deep pockets. So how could it go wrong? 

Answer: by being the car version of Kodak, which stuck by 35mm film when digital was the go. By being the car version of Blockbuster when Netflix was the go. By being the car version of a flip phone when iPhone was the go. By sticking with multiple, brainless, sensors when cameras and a brain are the go.

Waymo has got too many sensors. Not just cameras, but Lidar, Radar… gaydar and sonar…. Heh! 

They make the car look like a warty carbuncle. All these sensors and systems don’t make the nav better and safer. They make it more complex and more often conflicting. Which is the opposite of what the naysayers, the Elon-haters have been saying for years. And now have to eat crow. Elon was right all along. And Waymo was wrong all along. 

Tesla has cameras and a brain. Like humans with our two eyes and a brain. As @brivael notes:

Sébastien Loeb throws a 208 T16 at 180 kph down a muddy Corsican path in the rain with zero LIDAR. Two eyes, one brain. Evolution gave predators eyes for 500 million years, not lasers. There's a reason.

LIDAR is the equivalent of Marxism applied to the economy. More…

Elon commented on @brivael’s post:  

“People oddly assumed that I didn’t understand LiDAR, even though I oversaw the custom LiDAR development that Dragon uses to dock with the Space Station.”

In short: I confidently predict that Waymo will fail. If not in a year, then within five. And that Tesla with its FSD will dominate the driverless market. Which will be, per the cartoon above, a tsunami. A good tsunami! Getting around will be easier, safer, more efficient, better for the environment, and … cheaper!

And it will be so for everyone. As the Chinese say, for 男女老少, Nánnǚ lǎoshào, for Men and Women, for Young and Old. 

Dover, 2015

The new military superpower: Ukraine!

Ukraine is not just adapting to the new battlefield realities of robots, drones and AI. It's writing the text book. 

So says military expert Philip Ingram. I've seen other similar vids recently. We're seeing something new in war and we're seeing it most focussed in Ukraine. In Iran too, of course, but most advanced in ukraine. 

Who'da thought? 

And all of a sudden, it's Ukraine that's on top. Russia is losing more men per day than it can recruit. 400 a day it’s losing. To drones and robots. 

Ukraine’s 'drone wall', its “robot infantry” is rewriting the rules of modern warfare. 

In this week's episode of Battle Plans Exposed, military expert Philip Ingram MBE reveals a staggering new statistic: drones were responsible for 96% of Russian losses in March. 

From the surgical destruction of $25 million Tor-M2 air defence systems to the incineration of 'stolen grain' vessels in the Sea of Azov, the battlefield has become a 'panopticon' where Russian forces are constantly watched and relentlessly struck. 

Video Chapters 

00:00 Intro 

01:26 Ram II vs. Tor-M2 

02:21 TOS-1: Russia’s most feared weapon 

03:12 VOLGO-BALT 138: burning stolen grain 

04:36 Ukraine’s AI digital artillery 

07:22 Swedish RBS15 missiles 

08:44 Ukraine frontline update 

10:18 Fortress belt & Yampil chokepoint 

11:46 Russia's 96% losses 

12:22 Ukraine's drone wall 

13:16 Ukraine's drone units 

14:38 Ukraine's strategic strikes: Hitting Russia 1,000km deep 

15:39 Strike 1: Wiping out Orion UAVs at Kirov Airbase 

17:33 Strike 2: Drone Strike on Svitlodarsk 

19:08 Strike 3: Crippling Putin’s Armour Steel Production 

20:25 Strike 4: Penetrating Novorossiysk to Hit the Admiral Makarov 

21:45 Strike 5: The Sea of Fire at Nizhny Novgorod 

24:01 Technical Breakdown: Ram II & FP2 Long Range Drones 

26:37 Conclusion 

In this episode: 

The Drone Revolution: How $500 FPV drones are turning multi-million dollar Russian assets into "paperweights."
Digital Artillery: A look inside the "Crypt" - Ukraine’s AI-driven fire control system that’s outperforming Western legacy systems.
Deep Strikes: Ukrainian drones hitting Russian refineries and factories 1,000km behind the front lines.
Naval Shift: Swedish RBS 15 missiles and maritime drones making the Black Sea a "no-go zone" for Putin.

ADDED: “Russia thought it could win a war of muscles. It’s turned out to be a war of mathematics”. i.e. : Drones > Missiles. Robots > Men.

Saudi Arabia will attack Iran …

Click above for the Short. Prince Faisal in his perfect English accent

 Saudi Arabia will attack Iran …

… if attacks against Saudi continue. But Iran “doesn’t want diplomacy” says Saudi Prince Faisal, above. “I’m doubtful they have the wisdom” to stop war and negotiate instead. 

Arab nations are united against Iran. They support U.S. and Israeli actions against the Iranian regime. 

As the Riyadh Statement shows. Not just Arab, but nearby Islamic nations as well. 

The Prince Faisal Short, above.

Salt & Vinegar Chips. Spitting Chips. Sour Grapes.

Salt & Vinegar Chips. Spitting Chips. Sour Grapes. 

Take your pick. 

I'm talking about how pissed off China is that the largest high-end chip-maker in the world, TSMC, has done a deal with the United States to make their chips there. Beijing are super pissed off. 

How do they show their anger? Reveal their saltiness? Display they're spitting chips? 

Why, through the voices of pro-Beijing columnists in the South China Morning Post, of course! There's plenty of them these days. 

The most pro-Beijing, the most of a sock-puppet for Beijing is long-time columnist Alex Lo. Who writes two days ago, in his column: KMT Chief shows way forward to avoid blind confrontation with Beijing. [Internet Archive page]

Taiwan’s political pendulum is reversing. The government led by Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) William Lai Ching-te is increasingly discredited, not least for selling out the jewel of its semiconductor industry to the United States under pressure from President Donald Trump.

"Selling the family jewels"?? Hardly. They're increasing Chip capacity by manufacturing in the United States. Does it make sense? Surely it does. 

America is the largest customer of TSMC by a long way. America takes some 75% ot TSMC's output. Next largest customer is Taiwan itself with 9%.  Only then comes China, with 8%, a figure that's actually fallen in recent years. IOW America takes ten times the amount China does of TSMC's output. Of course it makes sense to manufature some of your product in your dominant customer's home. 

Committing some $US 500 billion to build facilities in America is just smart. 

But it smarts for China too. This is not TSMC "selling family jewels". It's TSMC being smart.

From China, from  Alex Lo, the OG Beijing sock-puppet, it's just... Sour Grapes. 

===================

ADDED: My post on TSMC: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

Who's TSMC? From Grok:

TSMC produces the vast majority of the world's most advanced semiconductor chips (over 90% of leading-edge nodes below 5nm or so), which serve as the foundational "brains" powering everything from smartphones and consumer electronics to AI accelerators, high-performance computing, data centers, and modern military systems.

Without TSMC's manufacturing capacity and technological leadership, global supply chains for AI innovation, digital infrastructure, and countless high-tech products would grind to a halt, making the company a critical chokepoint for the modern economy and technological progress.

In short, TSMC is the indispensable engine behind today's digital world and the AI revolution.

You’re Not Allowed to Say This… The REAL Reason This War Exists | Mosab Hassan Yousef

 

I post this as a history lesson in Islam as the "final revealed religon". And what this means for all non-Muslims in the world.

A history lesson in "Why the Muslims try to kill or subjugate all Jews". 

I've been banging on about this since the beginning of this blog. 

Why? 

Because it's in all the doctrines of Islam -- the Koran, the Hadith, the Sirah, the life of Muhammad, the Sharia -- and in all the actions of Muslims when they attack via terrorist acts in the west. They make it clear. "We are not here in [the U.K., Europe, wherever] to take part. We're here to Take Over". 

Mosab Hassan Yousef is the so-called "Son of Hamas". Because he's the son of one of Hamas' foundational leaders. He's a hafiz -- one who has memorised the whole of the Koran. He knows whereof he speaks. 

Muslim believe, because Mohammad told them so, in the Koran, that Islam is the latest revealed Abrahamic religion and it abrogates -- it cancels -- the previous religions of Judaism and Christianity. This is a very dangerous belief because it leads to their attempts to physically silence, to kill, those Christians and Jews who continue to believe that they have the right, the obligation, to carry on with their religion. 

Iran Crumbles...

 

... and it's good news for the West. 

I am most certainly aware that that's not the view of the legacy media. That they're taking every opportunity to big up any perceived negatives against America; and to diminish any of the achievement of Operation Epic Fury. 

I find it disgusting that the European West, the American media, the media in Australia, the UK, the EU, can be against winning a defensive war on Iran -- defence against a burgeoning Islamist caliphate -- because they don't like the man waging it. 

I'm fully on side with winning this war. I know that America and Israel are trouncing Iran. But also that Iran's is not a finished regime. And that the main battle now is against the headwinds from the West itself. Weird and disturbing. And should not be so. 

Shame on pusillanimous leaders like France's Macron, Britain's Starmer, Italy's Meloni, Germany's Mertz and the Spanish socialist shill whose name I can't be bothered to remember. But who seems happy to have the Modern Moors reconquist Andalusia. Which, bottom line, is what this war is all about. Pushing back Islamist Jihadi attacks, of which Iran, its Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, are just the tip of the spear. 

Is that too tough to read? Too difficult to acknowledge? So be it. 

00:00 Long View on Iran War 03:02 Iran Weakened Militarily 04:24 Winners and Losers Russia Gulf 06:22 Global Fallout China Europe NATO 09:16 US Outlook and Conclusion

Victor Davis Hanson is an American classicist, military historian, and political commentator. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Washington Times, and other media outlets.

Beach Barbecue

 

Great news for Tesla! | Herbert Ong & Brian Lutz

 

Great news for Tesla!

Great news for the world! 

The beginning of the transport revolution is here!

The Dutch regulator, RDW, just gave permission for Tesla's Full Self Driving (FSD) software to be used there. That will mean the rest of the EU 27 will soon do the same. The Dutch, and its RDW, are known as the gold standard in testing and licencing vehicles. 

About the Tesla FSD, the RDW said more than just "OK". They said Tesla's FSD was "the best system" they've tried and tested, rigorously, over 18 months. 

Likely other countries outside the EU will follow. China. Japan. Hopefully us here in Hong Kong, where Tesla's are super popular. 

The revolution is not just to the ease and increased safety in driving cars. It's another step to fully autonomous cars. And then to a whole new paradigm of how we get around. Cities will change. They'll get better, as we don't need so many private cars and so many buses and so many parking lots. Cities will get cleaner, more friendly, more relaxed. 

Things is gonna get better!

EV Sales, U.S. Q1 2026. For info post

 EVs ranked by total unit sold in the U.S. in Q1 2026.

1) Tesla Model Y: 78,591

2) Tesla Model 3: 31,672

3) Toyota bZ: 10,029

4) Hyundai Ioniq 5: 9,790

5) Chevrolet Equinox EV: 9,589

6) Rivian R1S: 5,494

7) Ford Mustang Mach-E: 4,600

8) Lexus RZ: 4,456

9) Tesla Cybertruck: 3,519

10) Cadillac Lyriq: 3,370

11) Honda Prologue: 3,319

12) Rivian EDV: 3,213

13) Subaru Solterra: 3,041

14) Cadillac Optiq: 2,847

15) Kia EV9: 2,740

16) Tesla Model X: 2,346

17) BMW i4: 2,184

18) Kia EV6: 2,023

19) Hyundai Ioniq 9: 1,990

20) Cadillac Vistiq: 1,902

21) BMW iX: 1,788

22) Rivian R1T: 1,658

23) GMC Hummer EV: 1,653

24) Lucid Gravity: 1,631

25) Cadillac Escalade IQ: 1,432

There’s more. Courtesy Sawyer Merritt on X.

Steven Mark Ryan comments on his "Solving the Money Problem" YT Channel.

Shall I make the obvious point? Oh, go on then. Well, it's this: that Tesla's top models outsold the rest of the top 25 by 33%. Tesla's single top selling car, the Model Y, outsold the rest of the top 20 put together. 

Plus, not shown here: Tesla was the biggest selling EV in the whole world in Q1. Yes, they did outsell China's BYD! Tesla outsold Chinese EV cars even in China. While costing 3 to 4 times as much as Chinese made EV and hybrid cars, in China. 

Hezbollah is the model for Iran proxies world wide | Loay Alshareef

Lebanon was known as the "Pear of the Levant", "the Paris of the Med"... the "Switzerland of the East". Now it's a basket case. Terrorised by well-armed murderous religious lunatics. 

It was Palestinian terrorists wot done it. In the shape of Hezbollah, the "Party of Allah". Hezbollah invaded Lebanon after being kicked out of Jordan -- a Palestinian state itself! -- for being too radical even for Jordanians. 

Hezbollah proceeded to be a parasite on the body of Lebanon, to change its character, to ruin it for Lebanese and foreigners alike. 

This is the Iranian IRGC's model. A state within a state. An armed group stronger than the military of the country it parasitizes on. All funded by Iran.  

All of which non-US westerners seem happy to go along with. 

Iran's ambitions don't stop with the Middle East. They explicitly go to Europe and then to the rest of the west. That's what this war, Operation Epic Fury, is all about. Preventing more Hezbollahs all over the world. More Hamas' all over the world. More Houthis all over the world. More Palestinian Islamic Jihads all over the world. 

We don't have to guess or speculate about this. Iran has been saying it clearly for fifty years. It says it still. It will go on saying it until their last breath. 

The guy in the Short clip above is Loay Alshareef (Arabic: لؤي الشريف; born 11 November 1982), a UAE-based Saudi-born Egyptian activist who advocates for the Arab world to normalise relations with Israel.

Get that! There are Arabs willing to have better relations with Israel. If you can imagine it, it would be a huge improvement to having a terror state bent on killing everyone that doesn't accept their radical Shia Twelver Islam. 

German Nuclear shutdown: me ALSO called it out!

Not just Elon Musk. Me too! I also said it was crazy for Germany to shut down its nuclear power stations!

But seriously, folks. It was blindingly obvious that it was a crazy decision. Even to a midwit like me, sitting in Hong Kong. Let alone to a quixotic genius like Elon in America. But German politicians and bureaucrats did it anyway. And are now suffering.

Why did they do it? One word: Greens. The Greens are so wildly, so obsessively and I must say, so ignorantly anti clean-green-safe nuclear power and they have been so influential over such a long time in Germany, that they overrode common sense and science. They threw 25% of Germany's clean, green, safe and cheap nuclear power into the bin. 

The same is true in Australia. We have abundant uranium resources. We are quite happy to export it. But we refuse, by law, to use it ourselves.  Sheer insanity. All our Green bodies are against it. Challenged that their views are ideological and out-of-date, they respond with ideological and out-of-date diatribes. 

In Australia too, being anti-nuclear energy is “total madness”. [Though, of course, it's seen as being a virtue by most on the Left].

Xfreeze on X:

Elon Musk warned Germany in 2022 about shutting down their nuclear power plants

He called it "total madness" years before the current crisis peaked

"It’s crazy to shut down nuclear power plants... especially if you are in a place where there are no natural disasters" — Elon Musk

Germany shut them all down anyway in 2023

And now the consequences have become undeniable:

- Energy prices skyrocketed with German households paying the highest electricity bills in the EU in 2025.

- The grid became increasingly unreliable

- Germany is now burning billions in subsidies just to keep the lights on - money that wouldn't be needed if they'd listened

Now, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has officially admitted that the nuclear phase-out was a "huge mistake" and a "serious strategic error" that left the country without enough generation capacity

What's even worse is that the exact same EU bureaucrats who pushed for the shutdowns are now actively campaigning to build MORE nuclear power plants

Elon was right. Again

Population collapse the greatest threat to humanity | Xfreeze & Stephen J.Shaw

Courtesy @Xfreeze. The dotted line is
replacement level, and all these are below it

Elon Musk — and Demographers— have been warning about this. 

It’s NOT the population "bomb” we must fear. It’s the population bust. 

Note how the very lowest birth rates are in East Asia. Where we live…. If I were a bit younger I'd try to give it a nudge along.

Demographer Stephen J.Shaw explains how immigration is not the answer to low birth rates. Neither for the country losing the emigrants nor for the country hosting the immigrants. 

Shaw also explains how it is that humans survived major population declines in wars and plagues. But how and why it’s different today. We are circling down a population plug hole. We ignore it at our extreme peril.

It's a long video. But then complex issues need complex explanations. 

"Hong Kong enters Zombie economy!" | China Economy

 

Errrhh... No. It's not true. No way Hong Kong is a "Zombie economy".  

I'm posting the video above as what the Chinese call "a negative example". It's the most untruthful, the most lying, the most ... just the most off-the-planet Disinformation and Misinformation that I've ever seen. In any video. Anywhere. 

And that's from me, who's no fan of the China Communist Party. Hong Kong is jsut not like they (mis)represent. And, By the way, I do know Hong Kong in previous difficult times. During the 1997 financial crisis. During the 2008 Financial Crisis. And during the Covid lockdown. So I know what it looks like when shops everwhere are closed down and the city is struggling. That's not the case now. No way. 

I’ve lived in Hong Kong since 1990, so when I watched that China Observer video claiming the city has collapsed into a “zombie economy,” I knew straight away it was a very negative, one-sided take that doesn’t match the place I see every day. It’s still alive, vibrant, and far from finished. The real problem is the factual errors that undermine the whole story.
First, the video says the Hong Kong dollar “no longer can be converted to $US.” That’s simply wrong. The Linked Exchange Rate System has been rock-solid since 1983. The HKMA still guarantees full convertibility at around 7.8 to the dollar. You can walk into any bank or use any forex app today and it works exactly as it always has. No capital controls, no change.
Second, the claim that “half a million flee” suggests an ongoing mass exodus. Yes, there was significant emigration after 2019 and COVID, but the numbers are not a current collapse. Official data show the population has stabilised around 7.5 million with net inflows from talent schemes and mainland arrivals. It’s not the uncontrolled flight the video paints. We know many friends who departed to Europe in the wake of Covid and the 2019 riots, but who have since returned.
Third, “9 out of 10 shops empty” and neon lights “flickering out like dominoes” is pure exaggeration. Vacancy rates in core districts like Causeway Bay and Mong Kok are around 8–12 per cent — elevated, yes, but nowhere near 90 per cent. Retail sales have been recovering and new tenants are moving in. Again, it's nothing like the downturns of 1997, 2008 and 2020. 
The video downplays Hong Kong’s financial strength. It ignores that we’re on track to be the world’s largest IPO market in 2026, with HK$110 billion already raised in Q1 alone. And capital is still flowing in — including big money from the Middle East shifting to Hong Kong, not just Singapore.
These aren’t small slips. They turn real challenges (higher costs, cross-border spending) into a false narrative of total collapse. Just because some sources are paranoid about Beijing doesn’t make every claim accurate. From where I stand after 34 years here, Hong Kong is adapting and still very much open for business.
ADDED: the "China Observer" channel is run by Falun Gong-affiliated groups, so it's no surprise their take on China is the most negative, the most anti, the most vitriolic to the CCP. 

Brobdingnagian Banyan

Massive electoral fraud AND the rape scandal. "All at levels never seen" | Raja Miah

 

Surely the Labour Party, surely Keir Starmer & Co, cannot go on ignoring this. 

This may be the most important video you will watch this year. Please share widely. 

Britain thought it got rid of the corrupt politics of "rotten boroughs" in the 19th century. According to Raja Miah, they are alive and well in the Pakistani & Bangladeshi communities of the North of England, the Midlands, Tower Hamlets, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds. All the major cities in England. 

Worse still, Labour is fully aware of going on but as it has been the beneficiary of these practices, many politicians have turned a wilfully blind eye to it all - just as they did with the grooming gangs. He joins Rafe Heydel-Mankoo to discuss the widespread corruption and political intimidation in these communities as well as broader issues such as the origins and root causes of the grooming gangs.

Smart Tesla crushes Dumb Toyota…

… And Dumb Ford, and Dumb Mercedes, and Dumb Kia. And Dumb any car. 

“Dumb” is any car that’s not Smart. That can’t drive itself. That can’t update its OS overnight. That can’t deliver energy to the grid, for money. That can’t be ten times safer than humans driving. 

Flashback to 17 years ago, in Antarctica. We’re there in Christmas Day 2009. We’re sitting on the deck of a smallish expedition ship, the Ocean Explorer. We’re anchored in Half Moon Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula. The sea is calm. Overhead a cloudless sky, a windless day. A rarity in Antarctica. It’s so calm and peaceful, it’s almost surreal. Anchored for Christmas amidst icebergs, penguins and assorted sea creatures.

We’re sitting on an outside deck, enjoying the pale midsummer sun. It’s a balmy zero centigrade. We’re sipping our pre-lunch champagnes in shirtsleeves.

Time for present giving. I give Jing the newly-released “iPhone”, the one that everyone’s been talking about. The very first model. Which you may recall now as clunky and buggy. But was super hyped at the time. The other presents I don’t recall, but don’t matter to this story. Which is about the iPhone. Which (to remind) I gave Jing. Who professed satisfaction.

A few weeks later, back in Hong Kong. It’s my birthday and I find my present from Jing is an iPhone. Jolly good, I thought. She’s so enjoyed the one I gave her that she’s gone and got me one too. We can share experiences! 

But no! The one I’m holding is the very same one I gave her in Antarctica a few weeks ago! She explains. She’s just too wedded to her Nokia Foldable phone. She can’t give it away, so best that I have this newfangled iPhone thingie.

OK. Fine. NP.

I take it on board our boat Xena and show to our crew. It gets passed around. There’s been a huge amount of hype,people want to see it. The conclusion is almost unanimous, in line with what Herbert Ong describes above. Versions of:  “This keyless keyboard thing won’t work. I’ll stick to my Blackberry”. 

And here we are today. Blackberry is bankrupt and iPhone is dominant. A phone which redefined what a phone was and could be.

Tesla is in the same place as Apple was then. We’re in another iPhone moment. When a car is about to redefine what a car is. If you believe this, then Tesla is the best stock to buy for the next half century. At least.

Oh. There’s a follow up to Jing’s re-gifting the iPhone to me. I’m sitting in bed, doing stuff in my new iPhone. The one I gave her and which she boomeranged back to me. She looks over my shoulder, trying not to seem interested, but can’t help herself. Asks to have a look. I show her. Next week she’s bought her own iPhone. We’re not in model 13 now…. In how many homes did that happen? 

Watch the video above, and imagine the same happening to Tesla. As a robotics and AI company, not as a car company. 

ADDED: Tesla Full Self Driving approved in The Netherlands, described as “the best system”. Soon to be approved in rest of Europe. 

Dog Dreams

Our Byron, contemplates three tennis balls. On our local Siena Park.
“Why is nobody throwing them for me? Gerrr…”

In the background is Discovery College, a private school of the English Schools Foundation on International Baccalaureate curriculum. Our son attended.

The AI industry is built on fraud?

Given how much we worry about AI -- correctly in my view -- this law suit below is super important. @Ric_RTP explains why: 

In 19 days, a jury in Oakland is going to decide whether the entire legal foundation of the AI industry is built on fraud.

Everyone thinks the Elon Musk vs Sam Altman lawsuit is a billionaire grudge match. Two egos, one grudge, a $150 billion damages number designed for headlines.

Easy to dismiss. Easy to scroll past. That's exactly what Altman wants you to think. Because what's actually on trial on April 27 is something much BIGGER than Elon's hurt feelings... A jury is going to decide whether you can legally take billions of dollars in nonprofit donations, use them to build the most valuable technology in human history, and then quietly convert that nonprofit into a for-profit company worth $850 billion. If the answer is no, the entire AI industry has a problem. Because OpenAI is not the only company that did this: Anthropic was founded by OpenAI defectors using the same nonprofit-first mission language. xAI pitches itself as building AI "for humanity." Every frontier lab has used the moral cover of "we're doing this for the good of the world" to attract talent, capital, and regulatory goodwill they would have never gotten otherwise. An Elon win doesn't just touch OpenAI. It creates a legal precedent that every AI company built on a nonprofit or public benefit promise becomes vulnerable to shareholder and donor clawback suits. That's why this case matters. And that's why Altman is panicking. Just look at what he did this week: Elon filed a motion demanding the court remove Altman and Brockman from their roles and FORCE OpenAI to return to its nonprofit origins. Then he amended the suit to say if he wins the $150 billion, all of it goes to OpenAI's charity arm. Not him. Zero dollars to Elon personally. That amendment was surgical. It stripped Altman of his entire public defense. He can no longer claim this is about Elon's ego or Elon's bank account. Elon is now legally on record saying he just wants the mission back. OpenAI's response was to panic-write a letter to the California and Delaware attorneys general asking them to investigate Elon for "anti-competitive behavior." Their strategy chief publicly accused Elon of coordinating attacks with Mark Zuckerberg. They called the lawsuit "harassment driven by ego and jealousy." That's NOT the response of a company that thinks it's going to win. Real companies with real defenses don't ask the government to silence the person suing them 3 weeks before trial. They let the evidence speak. OpenAI is scrambling because they know what's in discovery. Elon's team has been building this case for two years. Emails, board minutes, internal conversations about the conversion. The kind of paper trail that juries understand and executives can't explain away. And the timing couldn't be worse... OpenAI is trying to IPO at $852 billion. They just raised $122 billion. Microsoft has $135 billion of exposure to them. A jury verdict that even partially sides with Elon in late April or May would crater the entire IPO runway and send shockwaves through every major AI investor on Earth. This is why Altman spent the last 2 weeks doing press tours and policy blueprints and "super intelligence agendas" aimed at Washington. He's trying to REFRAME himself as the responsible statesman of AI right before a jury decides if he's a con artist. Most people will watch this trial start and think it's celebrity drama. The smart money is watching it and realizing that the legal foundation of the AI boom is about to be tested in court for the first time EVER. And if that foundation cracks, everything built on top of it is at risk.

======================

I add: "Writing Doom" a short film on the dangers of AI.

“Israel accepted, but Palestinians refused” | Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton: 

“Palestinians were offered a state on the entire West Bank and east Jerusalem as its capital. Israel accepted, but Palestinians refused. They did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians. All they wanted was to kill Israelis"

This must be shared every day.

Palestinians — Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah, PLO… — have never accepted a “Two-State Solution”. They want Jews OUT. Out of Arabia, where they’ve been for 3,000+ years. Expelled or killed. End of…. 

Bibi understood that early on. I’ve only come to realise and understand that in recent years. It may be uncomfortable. Nevertheless it’s true. 

It’s the ongoing story. Israel accepts. Palestinians refuse. 

Did Israel drag America into the war?

A constant attack by the Loony Left and the Marxist Right. 

The short answer is “no”. 

History teaches. If Israel, or, before Israel’s founding, “the Jooz” control American policy, they’re not very good at it. 

Here is the full list of Israel/“the Jooz” failing to control America:

- Pre-1948 (WWII): The US enforced strict immigration quotas under the 1924 Act and refused to significantly ease entry for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution; the 1939 MS St. Louis was turned away, and requests to bomb Auschwitz were rejected.

- 1948 Arab-Israeli War: The US imposed an arms embargo on all parties; Israel could not buy weapons from America and had to source them elsewhere.

- 1956 Suez Crisis: Israel seized Sinai with allies but withdrew fully after US economic pressure and UN demands under Eisenhower.

- 1963 Dimona: The Kennedy administration demanded inspections of Israel’s nuclear reactor and threatened consequences for non-compliance.

- 1981 Osirak strike: The Reagan administration condemned Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s reactor and suspended F-16 deliveries.

- 1982 Lebanon War: The Reagan administration suspended cluster munitions and pressured Israel to halt its advance on Beirut.

- 1991 Gulf War: The Bush administration urged Israel not to retaliate against Iraqi Scud missiles to preserve the coalition; Israel complied and accepted US Patriots.

- 2003 Iraq invasion: Israel warned against it and did not push for action.

- 2015 JCPOA (Iran deal): Despite intense Israeli lobbying and Netanyahu’s congressional address opposing the deal, the Obama administration negotiated and implemented it.

- 2016 UNSC Resolution 2334: The Obama administration abstained, allowing the resolution condemning Israeli settlements; Israel had sought a US veto.

Orchid Ovation

 

North wall. South facing 

The Orchids still bloom on our Frangipani.

The koi carp still replicate in our fish pond. 

The sun still rises over our Banyan tree. 

Wars aside.

Victory? | Michael Doran and Gadi Taub

Victory? 

Of course not to the legions in the media, the Trump and Bibi haters worldwide. 

Not to the “Gleeful Defeatists”. Whose personal hatreds of two men trump their support for the enlightenment values of the west. Who openly cheer for the victory of the worst tyrannical theocracy this century. 

Michael Doran and Gadi Taub have been fair-minded yet hard-headed analysts from a right-of-centre perspective. If you want perspective from left-of-centre, you just need to go to any of the mainstream media. CNN will give it you. So will the BBC. And so will Australia’s ABC. And Democrats too, of course. Australia’s Labor government. All of Europe….

Mike and Gadi are fair: they read out a list of ways the pro-Iran-regime crowd claim IRGC has won. As well as the counter to that. Which amounts to a reckoning that we, the west, are much better off than we were on October 8th 2023. This will no doubt be mocked as being “major cope”. You watch.

But, yeah. A Victory on points.

There’s discussion of the moral dilemmas of asymmetric war. Where the enemy is perfectly willing to put its citizens in harm’s way, to kill them if they dare resist. Gadi mentions an Israeli analyst who says that if the enemy puts civilians in front of military targets, you must stop the war. Which of course will mean that the west can never win another war against terrorists. It’s the ultimate “terrorist veto”. 

It’s what happened with the hostages in Gaza. One’s own military becomes hostage to the hostages. It’s a dilemma. Which some people, like Yishai Fleisher, argue against. And I support. Such are the exigencies of existential battles. Not “if they go low, we go high”. Uncomfortable, sure. 

Me? On the issue of “ceasefire” I’m not at all keen, as  I wrote. So I remain firmly of the opinion of “hmmm…”. Which is, at best, “we”ll see”. What do I know? Nothing. “I know nothing…”.

**************************

Vince Dao, a young conservative commenter, makes some good points. He strikes me as pretty smart. Head screwed on. Why Iran regime is changed, whatever the current appearance.

=========================

ADDED: There are reports — unconfirmed— that China pressured Iran into agreeing to this ceasefire. This could make sense. End of the day what they want, what we all want, tbf, is a peaceful Middle East. Or at least one without an Islamist, terrorist, genocidal-suicidal, millenarian, regional-global bully.*

*ADDED (2): Grok answer to my query: 

Yes, multiple credible reports confirm that China exerted pressure on Iran to accept a recent two-week ceasefire with the United States (and involving Israel), which was announced on April 8, 2026. The truce includes a pause in hostilities and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz for safe passage. [More]

Victoria ladies, 2017

"Ceasefire"? Or Rearming Opportunity?

 

Joe Siracusa's hard-headed analysis of the "ceasefire". 

Which I'm wary of, but hope for the best. That's all that can be said about it. 

Hope for the best. 

While knowing that the IRGC is going to rearm and that they're trolling America along. Something they've been doing since Jimmy Carter. 

I'm a big "hmmm".... about this.