This version is great 🤣🤣🤣

This hasn't been talked about much but it may be one of the most consequential revelations of the US's war on Iran: the fact that China has effectively replaced OPEC as the global price setter for oil. It isn't me saying it but Igor Sechin, CEO of Rosnef, the largest oil producer in Russia - itself a member of OPEC+ (reuters.com/business/aerospa…) And Sechin isn't alone in saying so: many Western analysts - such as Javier Blas, Bloomberg's top energy analyst - are essentially saying the same thing (see xitter.cf/RnaudBertrand/status/2…) How so? Well, China has demonstrated during the Iran war an extraordinary ability to simply walk away from the market and slash its oil imports by millions of barrels per day - during a months on end. At peak, they slashed imports by 5.5 million barrels per day, the equivalent of India's total consumption. They can, quite literally, switch an entire India's worth of demand on and off, at will. This is mainly because they have immense strategic oil reserves, estimated to stand at 1.4 billion barrels (eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail…) - 4 times bigger than the US's (the world's second largest inventory). In a nutshell, prices being, as everyone knows, set by supply and demand, China now controls the demand side in a bigger way than OPEC controls the supply side. So, as Sechin puts it, they now call the shots. All the more given that OPEC is weaker than it's ever been with the recent loss of the UAE, the largest producer ever to walk out. This is what effectively saved the world's economy during the Iran war: analyst after analyst predicted that the closure of Hormuz would make oil prices skyrocket to stratospheric levels, like $200-$300 a barrel (oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Pric…). However, Hormuz is still closed and prices sit at... $91 a barrel, after briefly peaking at around $110 in April (macrotrends.net/1369/crude-o…). China almost single-handedly made this happen with their flexibility on the demand side: what Hormuz made the world lose in supply, China basically cut in demand, which stabilized prices. Long story short, as the saying goes: "never let a good crisis go to waste." China used this one to effect a friendly takeover of the most powerful cartel on earth - without even joining it.

This morning, the Coldstream Guards at Buckingham Palace performed a tribute to Dolly Parton. The last time I remember the guards at the palace honoring the memory of an American entertainer was when they paid tribute to Aretha Franklin after she passed away. Well deserved!

I noticed Tokyo has DECORATIVE MANHOLE COVERS. Different designs in each district. Thought it was cool. Took a photo. Week 2: Took photos of 5 different ones. Random guy approached me: "You collecting?" Me: Collecting what? Him: Manholes. Me: ...no? Him: disappointed, Oh. Thought you were one of us. Me: One of WHO? Him: walks away Month 2: Kept seeing the SAME GUY at different manholes across Tokyo. He'd show up. Take photos. Leave. Finally asked him: "What are you doing?" Him: There are 347 unique manhole designs in Tokyo. I have 289. Me: You're collecting MANHOLES? Him: We ALL are. Him: *shows me a LINE GROUP* "Tokyo Manhole Hunters" - 1,240 members. Month 3: Joined the group out of curiosity. They were SERIOUS. Member 1: "Found a rare Taito-ku cherry blossom cover today!" Member 2: "PHOTOS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!" They had RANKINGS. COMPETITIONS. TRADING CARDS. Me: This is insane. Admin: This is HERITAGE PRESERVATION. Month 4: Got addicted. Started hunting manholes at 5 AM before work. Found a rare Meguro design from 1983. Posted in the group: CHAOS Admin: "WHERE?!" Me: "Not telling yet." Admin: "WE'LL FIND YOU." Month 5: They found me. Seven members showed up at the location at 6 AM. All taking photos. One guy CRYING. Him: I've been looking for this for 3 years! Me: It's a MANHOLE! Him: It's HISTORY! Month 8: Became top 10 in the rankings. Started getting SPONSORSHIPS. Company: "We'll pay you ¥50,000 to wear our camera strap while manhole hunting." Me: People WATCH manhole hunting?! Company: Your YouTube channel has 40,000 subscribers. Me: I HAVE A YOUTUBE CHANNEL?! Turns out the admin was posting my finds without telling me. Admin: You're our best hunter! Free promotion! Me: DELETE IT! Admin: It's making us all money! You get 40% of ad revenue! I'd made ¥340,000 WITHOUT KNOWING. Month 10: Quit my job. Became full-time manhole hunter. ¥600,000/month from YouTube, sponsorships, and selling "manhole location data." My parents: "What do you do for work?" Me: "Urban infrastructure documentation." Dad: "That sounds important!" Me: taking a photo of a sewer cover, "Very important." Present: Found 312 out of 347 designs. The remaining 35 are LEGENDARY. One hasn't been photographed since 2009. It's in a restricted area near the Imperial Palace. I'm planning a heist. Not really. But kind of. The group is WAITING. This is my life now.

This is psychotic behavior. It’s not just malignant narcissism and dementia. He has lost contact with the objective world and expects everyone to live in his alternate reality with him. It’s all manufactured by his own psyche and no amount of evidence will change it. This is a terrified inner psyche constructing a protective world. He’s insane and existentially dangerous. “Jeanine Pirro made a mistake. It was vandalism. I just told you we did, I think, 78. One of the things was to reflecting pool, hasn’t worked since 1922, because it always leaked. It always leaked from 1922. You know, it's the largest longest pool ever, all that. The concept is beautiful, but it always leaked because of the size, because of maintenance, whatever. But it was built in 1922, and from the day it was built, it like, Biden spent $58 million. Barack Hussein Obama spent much more than that. He said, "I have an idea. Let's take the river from, let's take the water from the Potomac." So they took the water from the Potomac, and it was putrid. It was putrid. It was a disaster. Biden was a disaster. I said, "I'm going to get that face." Along with Doug Burgum, Department of Interior, and we worked harder than that. Now we worked harder in all '70s. It's actually, I think, '81 now. You saw the new horses that just opened by the bridge with the gold. That was the way they were many years ago. Now they looked better than they did many years ago. But these monuments looked better than they did when they were originally built. Not just a little fix up. We made them the way they were plus, and everyone's so proud. The biggest, one of the bigger jobs was not really the biggest, believe it or not, but one of the biggest was the reflecting pool. And we did a great job. We sandblasted the stonehouse at his granite, so it has a long life. We did a great job. We got very expensive material to put on top of the surface that always leaked, because it was stone. It was a stone, sir. Always leaked. And we put it on, and it was beautiful. Now we have photographs of tapes, like moving cameras, right? We have them where people are on the side, cutting it with a box knife. So now I'm not saying I was 100% thrilled with the contractor, but the contractor was rushing. We wanted to get it open for July 4th. And we got it done. But in addition, there was mandalism. Number one, look at the grass, where the grass was all knocked out with a very powerful ingredient. We know very well what it is. But like I say, the name, because people get ideas. But they put a terrible phrase, I won't say that either, but a terrible phrase, on a massive piece of grass that we had just replaced. Kill the grass. We had to replace the grass. A lot of grass. In addition, they took knives or cutters, and they cut the material. And they put their hands and they pulled it. And there was also some maintenance things that we would have routinely fixed. But we had that up, and it was perfect. And then you had the bubblers, which get rid of what forms in the water. And that works great, but they turned it up because of the fight. Because it competed a little bit of noise during the fight. They turned it off, and it grows very rapidly in the water. But that actually works very well. And that's all. So now we're just about set to reopen it. And we had to replace cut areas where they cut it and ripped it. But there's a tape. And Jesse Wooders, by the way, did a whole big thing on it. There's a tape that's out there that I posted on truth. Where you have people leaning over the side, the weakest part, because of the flexibility. You know it moves. It's very complicated. It moves. And the softest part has to be flexible. And that's the stuff you can cut. And these guys knew what they were doing. And they cut all the way along the base, cut, cut, cut. Now, when you need to look at it, it was a day after the 4th of July, with the largest fireworks display in the world.”