Iran’s New “Insurance” Rule: Controlling the Strait of Hormuz
June 19th, 2026Via: What’s Going on With Shipping?:
Flashback: Take it through, Pepe!
Here’s Why Iran Got Everything It Asked For
June 19th, 2026Via: Peak Prosperity:
Norway Imposes Near Ban on AI in Elementary School
June 19th, 2026Via: Reuters:
Norway is imposing a near ban on the use of generative AI tools by elementary school pupils while also restricting their ?use in the education of older children to prevent a ?negative impact on learning, the country’s prime minister said on Friday.
Facing a broad decline in education test scores, the government in 2024 banned smartphones from schools and has ?given teachers back more powers to enforce discipline in the ?classroom.
Gabbard Drops Fauci COVID-19 Receipts On Last Day: He Funded The Research, Cooked The Cover Story, Then Lied To Congress
June 19th, 2026Better late than never, I suppose.
Via: ZeroHedge:
Newly declassified documents released Thursday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard show that a U.S. national laboratory assessed the COVID-19 lab-origin hypothesis as a serious possibility as early as May 2020, as well as evidence of U.S.-funded coronavirus research that included planning for spike-protein modifications, receptor-adaptation experiments, and testing in humanized mice in collaboration with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The documents also prove that Anthony Fauci lied under oath.
U.S. Lifts Naval Blockade of Iran
June 18th, 2026Today, U.S. forces lifted the blockade on all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas, in accordance with the President's direction. American forces are not impeding the transit of vessels to or from Iranian ports. All U.S. military blockade…
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) June 18, 2026
Trump Admits U.S. Was Weeks Away From “Running Out Of Reserves” When Iran Deal Struck
June 17th, 2026“It’s all fun and games as long as the U.S. and China keep releasing oil from their reserves…”
—Why Aren’t Oil Prices Higher?
And what is this alleged deal?
I haven’t posted about any deal between the U.S. and Iran, because no details have been released. Update/Just released: Full Text “Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran”
Via: ZeroHedge:
President Trump’s comment at the tail end of the G7 press conference about rapidly depleting crude reserves may have been the clearest admission yet of what is really driving the urgent push for an MoU with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“We run out of reserves in about four weeks,” Trump told reporters.
Trump said the world would have run out of oil reserves in 4 weeks, put pressure for a peace agreement.
Leak: OpenAI $38.5 Billion Net Loss [???]
June 16th, 2026Via: Runtime Wire:
Sam Altman (@sama)’s OpenAI lost $38.53 billion attributable to the company in 2025, according to audited financial documents viewed by Ed Zitron and independently verified by the Financial Times, a set of figures that an Ars Technica story pushed into broader circulation Tuesday.
The documents themselves are not public. But the reported figures are specific enough to cut through the abstraction that has defined the AI financing cycle: OpenAI generated $13.07 billion in revenue in 2025, incurred $34 billion in total costs and expenses, and posted a $20.92 billion loss from operations, according to Zitron’s account of the statements. The same documents put the net loss attributable to OpenAI at $38.53 billion after a larger $60.35 billion net loss was reduced by losses attributed to noncontrolling interests.
For Altman, the former Y Combinator president who became OpenAI’s CEO in 2019, the leak lands at the precise moment his company is trying to convert the largest private AI funding story into a public-markets story. OpenAI said on June 8 that it had confidentially submitted a draft S-1 to the SEC, adding that it expected the filing to leak and had not decided when to go public.
Related: SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI IPO Bag Holders – You Might Become One of Them
SpaceX to Acquire Cursor for $60B
June 16th, 2026Via: TechCrunch:
SpaceX has agreed to acquire AI coding startup Cursor in a $60 billion stock deal, just a few days after the space company’s historic IPO and less than two months after announcing a tie-up between the two.
The deal is meant to help SpaceX’s AI division — built around Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, which SpaceX merged with earlier this year — catch up to the major AI labs.
SPLC Boss Funneled $1.2 million to Lover in Neo-Nazi Group – Pair Had Joint Bank Account
June 16th, 2026Via: New York Post:
A top Southern Poverty Law Center official is accused of helping funnel $1.2 million in donor money to an informant in the National Alliance white supremacist group — who was also allegedly her lover.
The Department of Justice filed a superseding indictment against the SPLC accusing it of funneling donor cash to hate groups they were then telling donors they were fighting.
One figure, referred to as “Employee-2” in the indictment, is described as a “person who would become Director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project.”
For the Children: Britain Forces Age Verification to Access Social Media
June 16th, 2026What’s next? Identity checks to use VPNs?
Via: Reason:
Regardless of how the ban will be enforced, one thing is certain: It will come at the expense of the privacy of all British internet users. The government cannot ban children from social media without asking everyone else to prove they are not children. Ofcom, Britain’s communications regulator, says in its own guidance under the Online Safety Act that age checks can include facial age estimation, open banking, digital identity services, credit card checks, email-based age estimation, mobile network checks, and photo-ID matching.
