It is strange that we have to follow small independent channels to find out what is going on in the Middle East. This whole story has a strong bearing on the supply of diesel. Texas, for instance, has declared a state of emergency regarding diesel.
The collapse of Saudi Arabia appears imminent. The main reason being no-one is going to fight for MBS, and Saudi soldiers are as useless as tits on a bull (to use the technical expression).
The whole Sykes-Picot framework put in place toward the end of the First World War seems to be falling apart. T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and his adventures, and the business of the Anglo-French empires carving things up between them on a map, is now dust. Who knows what will emerge, but we are definitely watching history in the making.
The first game of the 2026 Rugby League World Cup was an entertaining match up between two old rivals, New Zealand vs Australia.
New Zealand lost by two points, but they physically dominated the Australians the entire time. What the Kiwis need to do is get better at making tactical decisions. Basically, they gifted Australia 14 points, and I'll explain why.
There were two intercept runaway tries scored by Australia. This should never happen, but if it does, then no more than once. Twice means the Kiwis were forcing their passes, and doing so in situations where there were too many hands in the way to be safe.
The last segment of play was where Australia was put in the position of closing out play while ahead on the scoreboard. This was when the Kiwis were hard on attack and up by two. The wise thing to do, from right in front of the goal posts, was to kick a drop-goal for 1 point. This would put them up by more than a penalty kick or long range dropkick (both worth two), but critically, they'd receive the ball from the restart.
Instead, the Kiwis played glory ball and went for the try. They put the ball up high into the in-goal area, and the Aussie caught it, which results in a restart for Australia from the 20 metre mark. They then took that ball from the restart and scored a try which went unconverted. Australia went from two points down, to two points up, when they should not have been allowed in the position of having possession. The Kiwis when looking for a try, if they were to kick, needed to put the kick in low, forcing Australia to come back from their own goal line.
All-in-all the refereeing was excellent, but I have to say some calls simply would not be possible without the video referee. I'd rather play flowed and was not be held up while some mysterious figure thinks about it.
Russell Brand is facing serious criminal charges in London. The trial will last about nine weeks. The BBC have outlined the charges he faces, see the below video.
It's all very peculiar; what was going around the airbase in England? RAF Fairford is where the US bases its B-1B Bombers, covering all of Europe and the Middle East. Now, suddenly, they've been withdrawn with very little notice. Was this due to an imminent threat?
AI cloud-computing company, CoreWeave (Nasdaq: CRWV) is facing strong headwinds. CoreWeave rents out infrastructure that trains hyperscaler AI models. But now, their shares have plunged 15.34 % today and their bonds have risen to yield nearly 15%.
There is only one certainty on share markets, and that is they fluctuate. So, don't go getting your panties in a knot just yet. However, if this trend emerges consistently across all tech stocks, then this could wipe out billions, possibly trillions, and that would be something of a crisis.
Bailouts will be more difficult this time round, because back in 2008 there wasn't a major regional conflict going on. But now, we can see several ongoing and the supply of diesel worldwide has been impacted. Industry runs on diesel, and we need diesel to eat, that's because farmers provide our food and they run their farms on diesel.
What I'm describing are several whammies. Stock markets dissipating wealth, farmers unable to grow crops and animals, transport becoming costly, and don't forget banks becoming very nervous. During the GFC small businesses found it very difficult to obtain overdrafts, and that could happen again.
The midterm elections in the US will be held on Tuesday, 3rd of November, while the New Zealand general election will be held a few days later on Saturday, 7th of November. The last time these two countries had elections coinciding so closely together was in 2020. Right now, 2026 could be even more important than six years ago.
In NZ the two largest parties are struggling to gain support. Just weeks away from the date and both Labour and National are polling below 30%. They'll both need coalition partners to govern.
Meanwhile, in the US the Republican party seems to have found a way to turn their election success in 2024, into almost certain defeat across the board in 2026. But then, the Democrats appear to be trusted only a little more. Both appear to be equally distrusted.
Are we witnessing an across the board change of established political power? The old-fashioned machine politicians seem to have had their day. People want to be represented by people they identify with and the current offerings just don't do it.
Ben Meiselis of Meidas Touch media claims that, due to Ukraine's successful attacks on Russian refineries, the US will really be buying Iranian diesel, rather than Russian diesel in the much publicised deal Donald Trump has been boasting about.
Has anyone noticed that since Ukraine attacked Yandex data centres, that the prevalence of bots on the internet has dried up?
Something tells me the Houthi rebels in Yemen have been seriously underestimated. Next thing you know, they'll be marching down the main street in Riyadh.
A southern hemisphere launch gives private or government or scientific missions greater options into the various orbits, of which low-earth orbit (LEO) is particularly sought-after for the likes of Starlink and other communications satellites, and US military constellations planned to support the Golden Dome.
Many more thousands of satellites are expected to go into LEO in coming years - Musk already has about 10,000.
The below video shows a flight by Dawn Aerospace at the Spit, but the new plans from another company will be vertical launches.
Is this the trigger that will bring down Wall Street?
22% of the Russell 2000 are zombie companies, that is, their operating cash flows do not cover the interest on loans about to be rolled over, coming off their record low base rates. Executives have been boosting their bonuses through share buybacks, instead of doing the prudent thing - paying down debt.
I'm with Fernando Alonso on this; during the formation lap several cars broke down with some kind of software bug that made the cars uncompetitive. The race was not stopped, however, but instead the organisers got cars back to the pit lane and then restarted the race with the starting grid line up.
Hang on, but the race was in the formation lap, why were those cars affected not sent back to pit lane to start the race from there.
Basically, because stars like Lewis Hamilton were affected by the software glitch, they had to break the rules. Basically, F1 is rigged. The racing now is akin to Esports and the cars themselves are sewing machines. The sport has gone to hell in a handbasket now American interests own it.
Following on from my busting Auction Hunters for being completely bogus, I am now calling out this YouTuber who claims to have bought a non-running motor yacht that is, potentially, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars once it is 'fixed'.
What we are presented with is an early 1990s Italian-built yacht that is in rather tatty condition. The boat is moored in a marina at Santander in Spain and it is claimed that the boat is going cheap because it has an overheating engine.
The team fly to Spain and check it out. They buy the yacht, and then take a serious look at the overheating engine. Miraculously, they discover that the seawater inlet to the overheating engine had been shut off, causing the issue. By opening the valve, they find there is no other issue to be solved and both engines run well, with the engine that was overheating now running cooler even than the other 'good' engine. What a bargain, and the team even imply that the marine engineers in Spain may have been scamming the previous owner.
Is any of this believable? It is not believable and I'll explain why. It is also a slander of Spanish marine engineers; did any of them actually work on the boat?
The story surrounding this boat starts with how the engine started to overheat. It was on a journey from the UK to Spain when it encountered a storm, and then the engine started to overheat but it could not be turned off as it needed to keep underway in the heavy weather. The last thing you want to do in heavy seas is shut down, so that story appears to stack up.
But why the overheating all of sudden? The most obvious thing to check out is the seawater filter, found right after that inlet valve. Once cleared, the overheating should resolve itself. However, apparently it didn't stop the overheating, which led to the owner selling to this YouTuber.
What our YouTuber discovers is that the seawater inlet had been closed off. Hang on, but the seawater filter was not blocked, so it had been checked previously. The experienced previous owner had owned the boat for years. He would know to check the seawater filter, you have to first shut off the inlet, then after clearing the filter, open it up again.
None of this part of the story stacks up. More likely is the YouTuber bought a tatty yacht from a bloke who couldn't afford to maintain it, and the YouTuber then set up the bargain of the century malarkey. They then slandered the marine engineers for good measure.
And was the boat even a non-runner? No it wasn't, it was running. It definitely had one good engine which could power the boat through the water. A side story was the expense of the marina they were in and could they move down the coast to somewhere cheaper. They could make such a move at reduced speed and staying close to the coast. But instead, they stayed in the marina for now, he got a discount for paying in advance (was that advertising the marina I wonder).
Some advice about boats, don't buy one unless you've got some serious gorse in your pocket. Don't believe tall tales like this one, the whole story just doesn't stack up.
I've made a decision, when I buy another laptop, it won't be running on Windows. I've been wondering why I made this decision and I've concluded that it's because Microsoft is the abusive partner in a relationship. They've always shown this tendency, but these days, there is no benefit in staying with them. They're just control freaks and offer nothing of value.
There are a lot of videos out there where the user says they're getting out, but the embedded video covers my perspective.
I do use AI from time to time, but it is seriously lacking. My main issue is that it is a massive sponge, soaking up everyone's creativity. It appears obvious to me that this will stifle invention and innovation. Why come up with something to only have it used by a freeloader?
I recall the dotcom bubble of the late 90's/early noughties. This AI hysteria has the same look about it. A lot of promises are being made, with no profits to support the hype.
Silicon Valley would have you believe that the founders of tech start-ups are competent and capable of making decisions. But how true is that? The video below asks the question of Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI. Altman has super-voting Class B shares in Reddit, but peculiarly holds 0% of OpenAI.
It may be worth considering the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, who holds Class B super-voting shares in Meta, effectively controlling that company. However, Zuckerberg is a university dropout, and never had a full-time job in the conventional sense.
I would ask, how do you feel about your retirement savings being invested with these people? Just call me old-fashioned, because I'd be very twitchy.
