Chimurry Al @Chimurry_Al

@historyinmemes @PROMAKOS_

Penny auction at foreclosed Michigan farm (1936). At penny auctions farmers would conspire to offer low bids, resulting in a low return to the creditor. The final buyer would then return the property to the destitute farmer. Hangman nooses served as a warning to squirrelly bidders. This haunting photograph from 1936 captures a penny auction at a foreclosed farm in Michigan, one of the most defiant and ingenious acts of resistance to emerge during the Great Depression. When banks repossessed farms after families could no longer meet their mortgage payments, local communities often took matters into their own hands. Farmers would gather in large groups and agree beforehand to bid only pennies on each item — from livestock to land — driving the auction prices down to virtually nothing. The final “buyer,” usually a trusted neighbor, would then return the property to the original owner, ensuring the family could remain on their land. The nooses seen hanging in the background weren’t decorative; they served as chilling warnings to outsiders who might attempt to outbid the crowd. These were not empty threats — solidarity and survival left little room for betrayal. The penny auctions became powerful symbols of rural unity and defiance. They weren’t just about saving one farm, but about preserving a way of life, one desperate bid at a time. By 1933, more than 200,000 farms were foreclosed across the Midwest, sparking organized movements like the Farmer’s Holiday Association, which fought to halt foreclosures entirely. © History Pictures #archaeohistories

Dmitri Mendeleev, creator of the Periodic Table, was nominated for the Nobel Prize 9 times but never won because a scientist he once criticized sat on the committee and blocked him every single time.

🟥🇺🇲🇸🇬Un jour, la CIA tenta de recruter le chef des services de sécurité intérieure de Singapour. L’agent américain chargé de l’opération fut arrêté sur-le-champ. À Washington, la panique fut immédiate. Pour étouffer l’affaire, un émissaire de haut rang fut dépêché en urgence à Singapour. Dans la plus grande discrétion, il proposa à Lee Kuan Yew 3,3 millions de dollars afin d’acheter le silence. Lee Kuan Yew refusa net. Froidement, il formula une contre-proposition qui claqua comme un rappel à l’ordre : Singapour n’avait pas besoin de pots-de-vin, mais de 33 millions de dollars d’aide économique. Cinq ans plus tard, il décida de rendre l’affaire publique. Le Département d’État américain nia aussitôt. C’est là que l’offense devint double. D’abord parce qu’ils avaient cru que les dirigeants de Singapour étaient à vendre. Ensuite, parce qu’en niant les faits, ils traitaient Lee Kuan Yew de menteur. Alors, il convoqua la presse et posa un ultimatum sans détour : si les États-Unis persistaient dans le déni, les documents et les enregistrements seraient rendus publics. Quelques heures plus tard, Washington recula. Le Département d’État reconnut intégralement la véracité de sa version. Cette histoire rappelle une vérité trop souvent oubliée : la souveraineté d’un pays ne se mesure pas à sa taille, mais au caractère de ceux qui le dirigent. Quand un État se respecte, même les empires finissent par reculer.’🇺🇲🟥🇸🇬

The Sassoon family’s opium operation was the largest drug enterprise in human history - and it operated under full Crown protection. The trade triangle worked like this: Step 1: British India grew the opium under East India Company regulation. Step 2: Sassoon and other trading houses bought it at government auction, processed it, and shipped it to China. Step 3: Chinese silver flowed out of China to pay for the opium, creating a massive trade deficit that drained the Chinese economy. Step 4: The silver was used to purchase Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain - commodities Britain’s domestic market demanded. The opium trade solved Britain’s trade deficit with China. Without it, Britain had nothing China wanted to buy. With it, Britain could drain China’s silver reserves while getting Chinese luxury goods essentially for free. By the 1830s, approximately 12 million Chinese people were addicted to opium. The social destruction was catastrophic. Entire communities were incapacitated. The Chinese government had every right and reason to stop it. When they tried, Britain sent the Navy.

In 1839, Chinese Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu confiscated and destroyed 20,000 chests of British-controlled opium in Canton - approximately 1,400 tons. He wrote a letter to Queen Victoria asking her to stop the trade: “Where is your conscience? Let us ask, where is your conscience?” The Queen never responded. Instead, Britain sent warships. The First Opium War (1839–1842) was not a war over trade disputes or diplomatic insults. It was a war to force a sovereign nation to accept the importation of an addictive narcotic that was destroying its population - because that narcotic was the most profitable commodity in the British Empire’s Asian trade. This thread is the story of how the world’s most powerful empire went to war - twice - to protect a drug cartel’s revenue. 🧵

This is genuinely shocking, and says so much about our approach to China. I decided to check for independent reviews of the English version Xi Jinping's latest book, published a year ago, to see what people had to say about it since I hadn't read it myself. To my surprise, I couldn't find any: not a single thoughtful review about the book out there! Even on Amazon, check it for yourself (amazon.com/XI-JINPING-GOV…): the book has only 3 ratings, that's it. No matter where you stand on China, you’ve got to admit that’s pretty crazy: the sitting president of the world's rising superpower publishes a 700-page book explaining exactly what he's doing and why, and we don’t even care to look. If there ever was a fact that illustrates just how willfully ignorant we are about China, this is it. All the more because we then go spew the usual clichés around how secretive and impenetrable the Chinese system is: the book is on Amazon for $21 for crying out loud! Anyhow, this felt so wrong that I figured I'd fix it. I bought the book, read it attentively and wrote what I hope you'll agree is a thoughtful review of it. The book contains genuinely surprising passages, such as Xi writing that oversight of the Communist Party by "the judiciary, the public, and the media" was not just something the Party must “readily accept,” but something that he framed as historically decisive - an essential component to "escaping the historical cycle of rise and fall" that has doomed every dynasty in China's history. Other passage that I'm sure would surprise many: a common narrative out there is that China blames the West for the century of humiliation and is driven by revenge. Well, Xi explains that's not true at all: the century of humiliation was China's own mistake, originated in the Ming Dynasty's disastrous "policy of national seclusion" that "resulted in China missing out on the opportunities presented by the Industrial Revolution" and "led to China’s decline." All in all, the book is remarkably self-reflective and thoughtful. For instance Xi recognizes that his drive for “full and rigorous internal governance” - including to rid the Party of corruption - risked "instill[ing] fear and apprehension, or intimidate members into inaction.” He emphasizes the need for pragmatism in this regard, codified in a framework called the “Three Distinctions” that separates honest mistakes - made while experimenting, reforming, or operating without precedent - from deliberate violations committed for personal gain. And many other surprises still. I found it a genuinely fascinating read for anyone interested in how the Chinese system works and how Xi thinks - or anyone interested in governance, period, as so much of what he writes is pretty universally applicable. This is the link to my review of the book, an article I titled "The Book the West Refuses to Read": open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert…

Ahora que ya habréis hecho la declaración de la renta: 1- Estado gigantesco y país desarrollado no son sinónimos 2- A partir de 20% de gasto público/PIB la correlación entre desarrollo económico y gasto desaparece 3- España tiene un gasto público del 45% del PIB, hay mucho margen para recortar Si te dicen, sin tus impuestos no habría carreteras, sanidad ni educación, te están engañando.

//The Wire//2300Z June 24, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: OPERATION TO ORGANIZE EVACUATION OF PERSIAN GULF UNDERWAY AS MERCHANT SHIPS PREPARE TO TRANSIT THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ. DOZENS OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS ARRESTED IN TURKEY BEFORE NATO SUMMIT.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Strait of Hormuz: Coordination efforts have begun regarding the large-scale evacuation of ships through the waterway. Due to the humanitarian crisis which has stricken over 11,000 mariners on almost 2,000 ships throughout the Gulf, efforts are underway by Iran, Oman, and the United States to organize an orderly movement through the now vastly restricted waterway. Analyst Comment: This time, the Iranians seem to be on board with the idea of a mass exodus of stranded vessels from the Gulf. The International Maritime Organization has advised ships to hold fast until a more solidified plan can be arranged, which is taking some time to coordinate due to the minefield greatly restricting the navigable passages and making collisions much more likely if hundreds of ships try to move all at once. Similarly, many vessels are now in a poor state of repair after having been at anchor in warm salt water for several months, so the chances of a ship having mechanical issues of some kind is very high, which is less than ideal in a crowded traffic scheme where naval mines are still a concern. Turkey: Counterterrorism raids have swept through Ankara as part of the increased security efforts ahead of the upcoming NATO summit. During the raids, approximately 200x individuals suspected to be affiliated with ISIS have been arrested, with at least one raid resulting in a shootout between the suspect and police. Analyst Comment: The ISIS presence within Turkey has been expanding for a while, as Turkey has taken on a substantial number of refugees, most of which came from Syria during the civil war a few years ago. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Due to the growing vandalism incidents, yesterday work crews were observed putting up fencing around some sections of the reflecting pool, as the renovation project continues and public interest in the project continues to grow. Analyst Comment: This would ordinarily be a non-story that is more of an annoyance than anything else. However this is becoming more of a significant point of pushing back against the Executive branch. Once egos get involved on all sides, something as mundane as a pool lining can become a point for escalation. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Discrepancies continue to mount in the Middle East as the finer details of the MOU are being worked out. The past few days have been host to the United States making claims regarding what the Iranians have agreed to, which the Iranians have promptly rejected. Yesterday, many American diplomats stated that Iran had agreed to let IAEA inspectors back in to their country to monitor nuclear sites. Immediately after these statements, the Iranian foreign ministry directly stated that this was not true, and that no inspectors would be allowed in. Similarly, President Trump stated that Iran has also agreed to not charge any fees after the 60-day negotiating period is over. Iranian diplomats have frequently stated that this is not true, and that an "insurance fee" will be charged moving forward. Oman also issued a statement confirming that fees will be charged by Iran in the future. During periods of negotiation, statements tend to be made not exactly in the interest of truth, but for reasons of securing a more favorable position. When we reach a point of where both sides are accusing each other of lying about easily verifiable facts, the only thing to do is wait and see what the truth works out to be. Analyst: S2A1 Research: publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report. //END REPORT//

“Revolution” has become a fraught term in present-day Chinese politics and historiography. But in my new book “To Rule All Under: A History of Classical China from Confucius to the First Emperor (Oxford 2026),” I argue that the Warring States 戰國 Period (481-221 BCE) was one of the most consequential revolutions in world history. #WarringStates #先秦 #EarlyChina

The largest US power grid is creating a new emergency warning as surging data-center demand pushes electricity supplies toward shortages beyond periods of extreme weather bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

🏅 📈 América Latina ahora extrae más oro que China, con México, Perú, Brasil y Colombia llevando a la región por encima de las 390 toneladas. El mundo está replanteándose el dólar, y el oro se está beneficiando. Ese cambio está creando una oportunidad única en una generación para las empresas mineras de América Latina, especialmente en los países productores más grandes de la región. 🗞️ explora la historia → latinometrics.com/articles/gold-…

Dear writers, we need your imagination, your narrative creativity and your lively thinking. We need these to create spaces of freedom and authenticity, within which divine grace can make the promise of consolation and peace resound. vatican.va/content/leo-xi…

A student submitted an essay she wrote by hand. Her university ran it through an AI detector. The detector said she cheated. She is autistic. Her name is Moira Olmsted. Adelphi University. February 2026. Turnitin flagged her essay as 100% AI-generated. She was disciplined. Two other AI detectors classified the same essay as human-written. She sued. She won. The court called the school's decision "arbitrary and capricious." She is not the only one. In May 2026, a high school student in Palo Alto was expelled after an AI detector flagged his work. He faced visa revocation. He filed a federal civil rights lawsuit. A researcher at Griffith University just proved mathematically why this keeps happening. The paper is on arXiv. The finding is one sentence. AI text detectors have a structural flaw that no amount of better engineering can fix. Here is what the math says. If a university wants its detector to catch 80% of cheaters, at least 750 out of every 10,000 innocent students will be wrongly accused. That is not a software problem. It is a theorem. If the university tries to limit false accusations to 1%, detection power collapses to 6%. It catches 6 out of every 100 AI-written papers. The other 94 get through. There is no setting where the detector is both fair and effective. The reason is diversity. Every student writes differently. Non-native English speakers use simpler vocabulary. Shorter sentences. Clearer structures. So does AI. A Stanford study found that 61.3% of TOEFL essays written by non-native English speakers were misclassified as AI-generated. A separate analysis tested 14 commercial detection tools. Zero out of 14 reached 80% accuracy. The students most likely to be wrongly accused are non-native English speakers, neurodivergent students, and anyone who writes with clarity and precision. The qualities that make their writing effective are the same qualities the detector mistakes for a machine. Vanderbilt University understood this. They disabled Turnitin's AI detection in 2023 after calculating that even a 1% error rate across 75,000 submissions would produce 750 wrongful accusations per year. 750 students accused of cheating for writing like themselves. The paper's conclusion is not that we need better detectors. It is that the diversity of human writing itself makes accurate detection mathematically impossible. The same thing that makes your writing yours is the thing that gets you accused. arxiv.org/abs/2603.20254

🇨🇳 NEW: China has successfully made a satellite call using a standard smartphone, with no hardware modifications required. The call was completed through the Thousand Sails constellation, which already has around 200 satellites in orbit and aims to reach 1,296 by 2027. The race to challenge Starlink is accelerating.

🛢️ OPEC's 2050 outlook has a message the transition debate keeps missing. Every fuel grows except coal. OPEC's World Oil Outlook 2026 revised global oil demand higher, citing new energy and industrial policies. The fuel chart is the tell. Solar adds the most new demand through 2050. But oil and gas still grow 17-19 mboe/d each. They don't shrink. Coal is the only fuel that falls, dropping sharply after 2030. This is an "all of the above" world, not renewables replacing hydrocarbons. The regional split is just as stark. India leads at 2.8% a year, the fastest on the board. Meanwhile China (-0.1%), Russia (-0.3%), and OECD Europe (~0.0%) flatline or shrink. OPEC says $17.7 trillion of investment is needed to sustain the system. security and transition have to advance together. The challenge isn't just cutting emissions, it's keeping energy reliable and affordable. Watch where that $17.7 tn flows. If it underfunds oil and gas, the supply gap shows up well before 2050.

La Asamblea Legislativa alcanzó este lunes acuerdos políticos para ajustar dos proyectos de ley en trámite: uno que amplía las competencias de Recope en el mercado de combustibles de transición, incluidos biocombustibles, hidrógeno verde y gas natural; y otro que modifica la Ley Orgánica de Japdeva para permitir el desarrollo de una marina en Limón mediante alianzas estratégicas.

🚢🇦🇷 Neuquén avanza con un régimen especial para que el gas de Vaca Muerta se transforme en GNL para exportación. La Legislatura trata un acuerdo con YPF que prevé 30 años de estabilidad fiscal, regalías de 7,5% a 12% y hasta US$350 millones para infraestructura en la Comarca Petrolera. El objetivo: más producción, empleo, obras y una plataforma exportadora de escala mundial. 🔗

Con un barril de petróleo, se obtienen en promedio alrededor de 72 litros de nafta, y distintos cortes como el querosén (alrededor de 16 litros) y fueloil pesado (alrededor de 7 litros), entre otros. En total de un barril de 159 litros (el estándar) se pueden obtener 170 litros de distinto corte. ¿cómo se obtiene los distintos cortes?, de la torre de destilación.

NASA's Voyager 1 found a “wall of fire" at the edge of our solar system. When NASA's Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause—the invisible boundary separating our solar system from interstellar space—it encountered a startling "wall of fire." Rather than the freezing temperatures expected in the deep cosmos, the spacecraft detected a superheated region of plasma with temperatures soaring between 30,000°F and 90,000°F (17,000°C to 50,000°C). This blazing shield is created as the solar wind collides with the interstellar medium, compressing particles and converting their kinetic energy into extreme heat. Remarkably, despite these mind-boggling temperatures, Voyager 1 was never in danger of melting; because the plasma is incredibly sparse, there were simply too few particles to transfer destructive heat to the spacecraft. Beyond discovering this superheated plasma, the mission recorded a dramatic drop in solar particles alongside a sharp spike in high-energy galactic cosmic rays, confirming Voyager 1 had officially exited the sun’s protective magnetic bubble. Today, floating more than 15 billion miles from Earth, the aging probe remains humanity’s most distant explorer, continuing to transmit groundbreaking data from the interstellar frontier. This ongoing journey not only highlights the resilience of 1970s technology but also deepens our understanding of the heliosphere, which serves as Earth's crucial first line of defense against lethal deep-space radiation. source: Stone, E. C., Cummings, A. C., McDonald, F. B., Heikkila, B. C., Lal, N., & Webber, W. R. Voyager 1 Observes Low-Energy Galactic Cosmic Rays in a Region Depleted of Heliospheric Ions. Science, 341(6142), 150-153.