Morning

Mayday always brings to mind annual morning celebration in elementary school with singing, lawn games including sack races and the May pole dance. Surprise flower bouquets hanging on the front door. Happiness of spring.

Additional headwinds are starting to appear regarding general acceptance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in various business sectors. Three diverse voices suggesting AI in the US is not a direct replacement for an experienced thinking human.

Human Employees Often Cost Less Than AI Armstrong Economics April 28, 2026

There is a growing contradiction unfolding in the global economy that exposes just how distorted this entire artificial intelligence narrative has become, because companies rushed to replace human labor under the assumption that machines would be cheaper, only to discover that in many cases AI is now costing more than the workers it was supposed to eliminate. The latest data shows compute expenses alone are exceeding payroll in some firms, with one Nvidia executive admitting outright that the cost of running AI systems has surpassed the cost of employees, while global IT spending is projected to surge to $6.31 trillion in 2026, up 13.5% in a single year.

Companies were sold the idea that AI would slash labor costs, yet they are instead encountering an explosion in infrastructure expenses, energy consumption, and ongoing operational costs that do not scale as human labor does. AI is not a one-time investment, it is a continuous cost center, and the more complex the system becomes, the more expensive it is to maintain.

Why Woke AI is FAILING: Hallucinations, Bias, and the Coming Tech Market Crash April 27, 2026 (32:10)

Sign in The AI industry in the US is doomed. Now China owns it all. (43:54 min)

Many of the geopolitical pundits we listen to mention Mackinder's heartland theory. Here is a brief summary and the article itself has several maps.

Iran: war to the death Alex Krainer's Substack April 10, 2026

Mackinderian geopolitics
In 1904, following an extensive study of world history and geography, British scholar and statesman Sir Halford Mackinder published a seminal paper titled, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” in which he argued that the British Empire’s exclusive focus on sea power was misguided and that the destiny of the world would be shaped by a land power.

He hypothesized that the long-term viability of states critically depended on their geographical space and location and concluded that in those terms, optimum conditions were only to be found in the inner regions of Eurasia which he named the Pivot Area: a large expanse roughly encompassing Russia, the Caucasus region, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Afghanistan.
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One of Mackinder’s disciples was Henry Kissinger. Together with his protégé Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kissinger founded the Trilateral Commission, one of the most powerful foreign policy think-tanks in the world. Brzezinski himself would become an influential policy advisor to many presidential administrations including those of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.
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The cold reality of the whole Zionist project is far more sinister: the creation of Israel in 1948 has been little more than British Empire’s geopolitical gambit. Long before the holocaust took place in Nazi Germany, Sir Arthur Balfour issued his famous memo to Lord Walter Rothschild, which is for some reason accepted as a valid legal basis for the creation of a whole new country. The real agenda was spelled out by Mackinder:

“If the world-island be inevitably the principal seat of humanity on this globe, and if Arabia, as the passage-land from Europe to the Indies and from the northern to the southern heartland, be central to the world-island, then the hill-citadel of Jerusalem has a strategical position with reference to world realities not different … from its ideal position in the perspective of the middle ages, or its strategical position between ancient Babylon and Egypt.”

These musings were corroborated by the alumni of Alfred Milner’s Round Table in a November 1915 article published by the Manchester Guardian. They explained that “the whole future of the British Empire as a Sea Empire” depended upon Palestine becoming a buffer state inhabited “by an intensely patriotic race.”

A few more tidbits regarding mainland China and Chinese diaspora.

The Chinese people have a long history of migration to overseas territories, as far back as the 10th century. One of the migrations dates back to the Ming dynasty when Zheng He (1371–1435), a Chinese man of Iranian ancestry, became the envoy of the Ming empire. He sent people – many of them Cantonese and Hokkien – to explore and trade in the South China Sea and in the Indian Ocean. It was during this time that the Malacca Strait and Malacca Sultanate developed as a maritime hub in the newly established Maritime Silk Road.[37]
Wikipedia April 2026

Media Chats How China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression Shaped WWII Victory Aug 2025 (53:22 min)

Hidden Chinese history of Australia’s gold rush is going global Asia Times April 28, 2026

Gold Rush Town marks the first time a pop superstar has told the history of Australia’s gold rush through Chinese eyes. But the Sovereign Hill museum has an admirable record of including the history of Chinese people during the Australian gold rush.

Led by historian Anna Kyi, the museum’s Chinese exhibits exemplify a new push in Australian heritage to rediscover the foundational role played by Chinese migrants in Australian history using Chinese-language sources.
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The music video features Chou as a sharply dressed Chinese detective, walking stick in hand, chasing down Chinese bank robbers through the twists and turns of a frontier town in which the main characters are ethnic Chinese.

The Chinese in Ballarat were a prominent community in the 1850s. They made up 25% of the community, and may have been the majority in some areas of the colony. As late as 1871 – after the end of the city’s gold rush – 14% of men over 15 in Ballarat were Chinese.