Hostages

November 2025

$30 million in gold.

The year is 1850. Your ass hurts from sitting in a covered wagon for the last 13 days traveling west. Going from town to town gets tiresome, but rumors of this thing called gold are taking over. Surely, it can’t be that hard to find. You met people a lot dumber than you who have struck it rich.

Thousands willing to risk it all traveled across the Rocky Mountains for a chance to change their future. But what I have found is that the closer I get to the Rocky Mountains, the more difficult it has been for me to get gold. Traveling for work has made it nearly impossible to get gold shipped to me. I have had five orders canceled in the last month because my billing address was different from my shipping address.

At the same time, buying Bitcoin has never been easier. I hit a few buttons on my phone, and it’s done. Now I know gold is old school, but it has made me think, how does ease and simplicity impact the future of these two assets?

Gold must be delivered by the postal service or Fed Ex with a signature required. If you work, you either have to get lucky and be home when FedEx shows up or take the time off. There are no holds at the FedEx store for shipments of this value. After the gold is in your possession, you need a safe or lock box. If someone were to kick in your door, you need some way to protect it.

I know you can buy paper gold on certain exchanges and ETFs, but if shit really hits the fan, do you believe you will get your money back? When the guys with the guns show up in London, where the big vaults hold the physical gold represented by paper and shares, we all know the Average Joe will be the loser.

Gold has been around for 5,000 years and isn’t going anywhere, but it can definitely be difficult to handle and store. Bitcoin has been around for 15 years and is trying to make a name for itself in doing the opposite. You can download an app on your phone, a storage wallet, and have it in your possession in minutes.

If you’re younger, hold more Bitcoin, and if you’re older, hold more gold. The asset you trust most will provide you with the patience needed when it matters most.

Whether it’s gold or Bitcoin, you have to keep it in your own custody. A safe at home for your gold or a hard storage wallet for Bitcoin. I am technologically illiterate for a millennial, and I figured out how to take Bitcoin out of the system and hold it in a wallet. It’s just an app on your phone. The River App helped me figure it out.

https://river.com/learn/how-to-get-started-self-custody/

Bottom line: Buy assets. Hold them hostage. When the bad guys come, you can keep making money when it matters most.

China Controls the Rare Earths

The side that is smiling is winning.

October developments on rare earth elements:

What Trump claimed was a blindside announcement of export controls was not much of a surprise in other circles. Rumors swirled that Bessent was read in on the export ban coming, but Trump was never looped in.

The export controls announced, starting December 1st, said anyone receiving rare earth elements with more than 0.1% would need a license from the Chinese government. Essentially if Ford needs x amount of rare earths for 500 F-150s, all that would be sent is enough for 500 F-150s. If China felt you were not being honest, you would be cut off completely.

It wasn’t long after the export control announcement that Trump boarded Air Force One…

Before Trump travelled to Asia this week, he clinched an $8.5bn deal with Australia, promising industrial co-operation and joint investment to build processing capacity for rare earths outside China.

The world’s largest supplier of rare earths outside China is the Australian company Lynas Rare Earths. It relies on Malaysia for part of its refining but has faced a number of regulatory hurdles there over the years.

Speaking at the time, during Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to the White House, Trump said that “in about a year from now we’ll have so much critical minerals and rare earths that you won’t know what to do with them”, adding that “they’ll be worth $2” – the suggestion being that prices would plummet as supply soared.

“The country (Australia) is a periodic table that lights up like a Christmas tree boasting one of the broadest and richest concentrations of mineral resources on Earth,” Gracelin Baskaran and Kessarin Horvath of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies wrote in a recent essay.

In Trump fashion, this is comedic, but doesn’t carry much. If Trump was that confident in Australia, why were deals made all across Southeast Asia?

The deals with Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia differ in size and substance and it’s too early to assess their tangible impact. But they all include efforts to diversify access to the minerals that have become essential for advanced manufacturing, from electric vehicles to smartphones.

Putting a pen to paper doesn’t come close to making this rare earth fiasco solved. China weaponized rare earths in 2010 against Japan and the Japanese still get over 60% of rare earths from China. Finding the rare earths isn’t the issue as many countries have the elements. It’s getting them out of the ground and the refining process. Getting to the 99.9999% purity required, it is a nasty process.

With rare earths, it’s not just mining but even the processing that is a dirty business. It involves extraction, leaching, thermal cracking and refining, all of which produce radioactive components. The impact in China has been well-documented, which has meant that it’s not an industry other countries have readily embraced.

Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore

The Francis Scott Key Bridge got hit over a year ago and construction has not begun due to permitting and environmental studies. How long will it take to build a rare earth refining facility that creates radioactive waste? If you would tell me ten years, I would take the over.

The day before Halloween, we were told the China-U.S. trade deal has been settled for the tenth time this year, and rare earths are in the mail back to the U.S. But, for how long?

Until we have our own supply chains, any issue with China, and the rare earths will stop immediately. The media talks about the rare earth impact on smartphones and vehicles, but the real issue is that RARE EARTHS CONTROL THE MILITARY! Think to yourself, why in the hell would China send us rare earths so the U.S. can make weapons to point at China? The popular F-35 jet has 900 pounds of rare earths per aircraft.

900 pounds of rare earth elements

China knows the U.S. used 15% of its missiles stockpile in the 11-day conflict between Iran-Israel and the hundreds of pounds of rare earths requried to build one fighter jet. China has the American military by the balls. Who looks like they have the power?

Trump & Xi

Since 2012, investment in Kazakhstan’s mining sector has reached $3.6 billion to develop refined rare earth supply chains, but it has failed. More money is being invested to figure it out, but anyone who thinks this is a 1-year fix is living in fantasy land.

Dutch Government Takes Control of Chinese Chipmaker

It’s not my intention to continually talk about China, but the western media is such a joke, you would have no idea the threats we face unless you hear it from me. It’s no coincidence that alternative media has exploded. Someone has to tell the truth.

Nexperia’s Timeline:

• 2017: NXP sold its Standard Products division, which is now Nexperia, to Chinese investment groups JAC Capital and Wise Road Capital for $2.75 billion.

• 2019: Chinese company Wingtech Technology acquired a controlling stake in Nexperia for $3.6 billion.

• 2025: The Dutch government took control of Nexperia’s governance due to national security concerns.

What just happened in the Netherlands should alarm anyone who still believes Europe is a safe, rules-based place to do business.

Under a dusty 1952 wartime statute—the Goods Availability Act—the Dutch government has effectively seized control of Nexperia, one of Europe’s few thriving semiconductor firms. The company’s Chinese CEO was suspended, its shares placed under a government-appointed trustee, and a “temporary” director given decisive voting power. The official justification: vague allegations of governance failures. The real trigger, however, appears to have been American pressure.

Beijing swiftly retaliated by banning Nexperia from Chinese supply chains—commercially equivalent to a death warrant for a chipmaker. Europe now finds itself squeezed between two economic superpowers: Washington’s sanctions on one side, Beijing’s countermeasures on the other.

Nexperia employs more than 10,000 people in Europe and produces over 100 billion chips annually. It is headquartered in the Netherlands, pays European taxes, and complies with European law. Yet the Dutch government decided that its Chinese ownership—legally approved years ago—made it expendable.

Good luck to any non-Western investor wanting to start a business in Europe. When a government seizes your assets overnight simply because America tells them to, capital inflows are done.

This is a shitty situation overall for the Netherlands; they got trapped between the two superpowers of the world. This event shows the desperation of the U.S. to control any kind of supply chain, even one that’s across an ocean.

Tensions have eased as of now, with ongoing negotiations between the Dutch and Chinese governments to establish a path forward. But as of a few weeks ago, Volkswagen and Honda were stopping production due to chip shortages.

The bigger story here, like the rare earth metal story above, is the weaponization of supply chains. China has been playing nice so far, but how far will they allow the West to push them?

The weak attempt at a power grab by the U.S. was not thought through very well, as there is no backup for these supply chains in case the Chinese government stopped shipping chips.

China not only controls the U.S. military, but also automotive manufacturing in the U.S. and Europe. If Trump and the West keep pushing China, we may see a halt to the production of smartphones, computers, vehicles, and military weapons.

How would your life change without the newest models of iPhones and SUVs? America would be the next Cuba, fighting over the iPhone 17 model five years from now.

Amazon’s Plans to Replace Workers with Robots

Over the past two decades, no company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon. In its ascent to become the nation’s second-largest employer, it has hired hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, built an army of contract drivers and pioneered using technology to hire, monitor and manage employees.

Now, interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times reveal that Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots.

Amazon’s U.S. work force has more than tripled since 2018 to almost 1.2 million. But Amazon’s automation team expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States it would otherwise need by 2027. That would save about 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs and delivers to customers.

Executives told Amazon’s board last year that they hoped robotic automation would allow the company to continue to avoid adding to its U.S. work force in the coming years, even though they expect to sell twice as many products by 2033. That would translate to more than 600,000 people whom Amazon didn’t need to hire.

At facilities designed for superfast deliveries, Amazon is trying to create warehouses that employ few humans at all. And documents show that Amazon’s robotics team has an ultimate goal to automate 75 percent of its operations.

AI is coming sooner than expected, even for the largest employers in the U.S. In fact, disruption to employment is coming so fast, Amazon has mitigation plans to keep fear low. Amazon would rather you save $.30 per item than employ hundreds of thousands of people. Is that best for the customer or Amazon?

Amazon is so convinced this automated future is around the corner that it has started developing plans to mitigate the fallout in communities that may lose jobs. Documents show the company has considered building an image as a “good corporate citizen” through greater participation in community events such as parades and Toys for Tots.

The documents contemplate avoiding using terms like “automation” and “A.I.” when discussing robotics, and instead use terms like “advanced technology” or replace the word “robot” with “cobot,” which implies collaboration with humans.

Translation: AI will do to white collar jobs what China did to manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

The larger issue is the second and third-tier implications of this level of job losses. These white collar workers will have mortgages, vehicle loans, credit cards, etc. What happens to the financial system when all of this money starts coming due? I would rather pay $1.30 for something than $1, when the cheaper price includes the financial system crumbling.

Earlier this week, the market crashed a few days out of nowhere as liquidity began to dry up in certain sectors. The days of the Fed shrinking the balance sheet are over. Fire up the money printers.

The Ponzi scheme of the U.S. financial system reveals itself every time the money printers stop. If you are not investing for AI to seriously disrupt the current debt-based economy, I am not trying to scare you, but you are already behind.

I hope I am wrong, but these kinds of job losses are why Mamdani just got elected, and he is the first socialist to get elected, but he will not be the last. What socialism has looked like in the past doesn’t matter when you are desperate. If you are making $50,000 per year, your rent is $3,000/month, you have student loans, and a car payment. You are voting for the next Mamdani.

Bill Gates Calls for Strategic Pivot from Climate Change

Bill Gates thinks climate change is a serious problem but it won’t be the end of civilization. He thinks scientific innovation will curb it, and it’s instead time for a “strategic pivot” in the global climate fight: from focusing on limiting rising temperatures to fighting poverty and preventing disease.

What a joke.

Why do we need Bill Gates’s blessing on anything science-related? He’s a goddamn computer guy.

As American taxpayers, we have spent over $1 trillion on climate change, listening to people like Bill Gates, Al Gore, and John Kerry saying that if we don’t fix this, it will be the end of humanity.

We’ve heard for a decade that we need to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Now, as we look to AI for the future, China has used these greenhouse gas fears to conquer the world in technology by ignoring the global warming fraudsters, and they are winning.

Germany has shut down nuclear reactors in the name of green energy and been forced to purchase Russian natural gas to heat their homes in the winter. Russia is the largest funder of green energy propaganda in Europe as it watches Europe shut down its electrical infrastructure and is forced to purchase gas from them. What a deal.

When does it end?

When does the West quit listening to “experts” who have done nothing but get rich off a system that has exploited American taxpayers? Thanks to Bill Gates, Al Gore, John Kerry, etc., we have blown a trillion dollars and allowed Russia and China to replace us as the natural resource and technological superpower of the world.

Think of how much money $1 trillion is. A million seconds is a few days, a trillion seconds is 32,000 years. We could have fixed America’s infrastructure and employed millions of people in the process with that amount of money.

But what did we get instead? Unprofitable wind turbines that end up in landfills, and the purchase of so many solar panels from China, it would cost hundreds of billions to even come close to catching up in technology and supply chains. The largest solar installer in the U.S. shut down for months when China quit shipping panels.

$8 trillion in the Middle East, $1 trillion on climate change, record entitlements, and 40 million people on food stamps. It is not rocket science why America is broke, it’s people telling you government spending is more complicated than basic math. We have been continually blowing money on things that provide zero return on investment and create zero jobs; we deserve the destiny we are going to get.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Lifestyle:

At times, all I feel I do is sit on an airplane or in a vehicle. Traveling allows you to see the world and experience different cultures, but it also allows your lower back to become stiffer than a wood plank.

Humans are meant to move. Walking, which is just a simple movement, is one of the best things you can do for yourself. And if you don’t move and get the bodily fluids moving every day, it will catch up with you.

As I fell behind on my fitness, I tried chiropractors and physical therapists to fix what I was feeling in my lower back and left hip. Being in my early 30s and playing sports all my life, I never thought this would happen to me.

Pain everyday gets old faster than you imagine. My low back, groin, and hamstrings were so tight, I had to do something to change.

Hip tightness is such a common thing now as people wake up to look at a screen, then go to work to stare at a screen, and then go home to watch a screen. Your lower body barely moves. It’s turned into a big enough issue, entire social media pages are dedicated to mobility and flexibility.

Noah Ryan introduced me to the Cossack squat.

I am not even close to a doctor or physical therapist, but I have found that tight muscles are weak muscles, and stretching is good to an extent, but you need to strengthen the area.

If you are not hitting your 10,000 steps a day and are in pain, this exercise will get you elite hip strength and flexibility. Be sure to start slow. When I started, I couldn’t even get halfway down, but if you hit this exercise 2-3x per week, results come fast, and the pain starts to disappear. The goal is to be fuckable and functional, not so large and stiff, you can’t even turn around to wipe your own ass.

Investments:

I deployed more cash last month than I have in a minute. A few opportunities presented themselves that I had to take advantage of. My investments will start with cash and then be in order from largest to smallest. You will be able to tell that my investments shuffled around a little bit.