Two weeks ago the FBI announced that 489 ‘violent criminals’ had been arrested in Memphis over a 60-day period, which included 118 guns seized, in a multi-agency effort involving the FBI, DEA, Memphis PD, ICE, Homeland Security and other agencies.

Shortly after this announcement, Memphis law enforcement coordinated with DHS to deploy the National Guard to Memphis to assist the effort.

In response, 30-year-old Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson – who just launched a Democratic primary against longtime Rep. Steve Cohen, referred to the National Guard deployment in Memphis as a “military occupation.”

“I think in this moment in time, where even our own city is under military occupation … We have to stand up, we have to speak up, and we have to have people who are going to fight back and fight for our communities,” said Pearson last week.

Watch:

Far-left Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson claims that the National Guard deployment to Memphis is a “military occupation.”

In reality, since the beginning of the Memphis Safe Task Force, more than 500 criminals have been arrested, including gang members and sex offenders. pic.twitter.com/WYtAbx4QyJ

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 11, 2025

He said it again on MSNBC…

Far-left Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson claims that the National Guard deployment to Memphis is a “military occupation.”

In reality, since the beginning of the Memphis Safe Task Force, more than 500 criminals have been arrested, including gang members and sex offenders. pic.twitter.com/WYtAbx4QyJ

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 11, 2025

Pearson’s comments echo those of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), who went to ‘war’ with the Trump administration after Texas National Guard troops arrived in Illinois on Tuesday, tasked with protecting federal personnel and property as anti-immigration protests rage. 

Pritzker condemned the deployment, calling it “Trump’s invasion,” and calling on TX Governor Greg Abbott (R) to withdraw his support. Meanwhile, the state of Illinois – joined by the city of Chicago – filed a lawsuit in federal court to attempt to stop the deployment. 

Pritzker also suggested that America is currently witnessing the same thing as the Germans did in the early days of the Third Reich. 

“In the early days of the Nazi regime, they started slowly but surely taking away people’s rights,” Pritzker babbled during an interview.

“And what we’re seeing now is the very same thing,” he further declared.

JUST IN: Illinois gov JB Pritzker says America is currently witnessing what the early days of the Nazi regime looked like.

Just one week ago, Pritzker said it was dangerous for the Trump admin to call Democrats “fascists” as he now equates the Trump admin to Nazis.

“In the… pic.twitter.com/6jHKP2i944

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 7, 2025

In short, Democrats are ratcheting up the drama and actively opposing federal law enforcement efforts.  

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Authored by Hannah Frankman Hood via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Studies suggest that today’s kids get an average of 4–7 minutes of unstructured time outside a day, while they spend 7–8 hours a day in front of screens.

With a youth mental health crisis also sweeping the nation (rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and diagnosed mental health disorders like ADHD are all at record highs), it’s not hard to imagine that the correlation between kids’ indoor confinement and their mental health struggles is more than a coincidence.

The mental health ramifications of too much screen time are easy to track, and are heavily studied. But the downstream effects of not enough time outside are equally startling. Free play and unstructured time are foundational to a child’s well-being, and in America, our kids aren’t getting it.

Seven minutes a day is barely enough time to begin to imagine the premise of a game or an imaginary adventure. Seven minutes a day is barely the amount of time it takes to walk back and forth from the bus stop. It’s not even long enough to go for a walk around the block.

Why Aren’t the Kids Outside?

The twenty-first century has provided us with a perfect storm of conditions keeping kids away from the outdoors: screens are alluring, the outside is “dangerous,” and parents encourage their kids towards sedentary “for your own good” activities (math olympiad! French tutoring! after school clubs!).

Parents fear the dangers of the outdoors. In the modern world, everything from crime statistics to urban design itself lead parents to keep their kids on a short leash. Urban settings don’t have much room for free play; parks and playgrounds and other child-centric outdoor spaces are strangely sparse, as if urban designers wanted a world without kids in it. More apartment complexes are built with dog-washing stations than playgrounds.

The modern world seems to have been built by people who forgot what childhood is, and fears of crime keep parents nervous about letting their kids freely use the spaces that do exist.

But separate from kid-centric space or the lack thereof, kids are busy. Their days are consumed by ever-expanding school requirements, structured extracurricular activities, and of course the ever-present lure of screen time—to the point that even in suburban neighborhoods with big backyards, kids are barely ever venturing outside.

Which is how we end up with kids getting seven to eight hours of screen time a day, but only four to seven minutes of unstructured free time outside—the latter of which people of our grandparents’ generations couldn’t have even imagined.

The “unstructured” part is important—“time outside” in a blanket sense isn’t enough. Spending an hour on the field for soccer practice gives kids the benefit of fresh air and sunshine and physical movement, but it isn’t giving them the psychological benefits of free play.

Unstructured means time and space away from the rules and instructions of an adult. It exists fully in the wild and whimsical world of the child: free, unimpeded, child-directed, and often tinged with a heavy dose of imagination. There are no set goals of the kind that exist in PE class or a sports club. It’s pure and unfettered, and it’s a biologically hardwired need for children’s development.

Mental Health Crisis in Childhood

Parents worry about the dangers of the outside world, but what about the dangers of the on-screen world, where grooming and exploitation are common occurrences, where adults behind screens pose as other children and talk to young people too naive to know what to watch out for? What about the physical dangers of a sedentary life?

Seventy-seven percent of American youth ages 17–24 are ineligible for military service. Thirty-three percent of 17–24 year olds are ineligible due to obesity. Of the young people who meet the weight requirements, another 25 percent don’t meet the physical fitness standards. Other physical conditions and mental health disorders are also leading causes of ineligibility.

The poor health of America’s youth has many factors—poor diet, exposure to environmental toxins, a rise in chronic conditions, and countless other variables. But with 30 percent of elementary schools no longer requiring daily recess, and 28 states without any requirements around recess at all, neither schools nor parents are consistently defending kids’ free outdoor time.

And what about the psychological dangers of not getting time outside to play?

Twenty percent of American adolescents ages 12–17 report experiencing symptoms of anxiety in the past two weeks, while 18 percent of adolescents report symptoms of depression. Forty percent of high schoolers report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. In 2023, the CDC found that 9 percent of adolescents had attempted suicide.

Of course, not all of this traces back to time spent outside, nor lack of it. But as we’re depriving kids of a fundamental part of their development, such a deficit might be at least partially to blame for the negative outcomes that follow.

Kids Need Free Play Outdoors

As researcher and psychologist Peter Gray says, “Children are designed, by nature, to play and explore on their own, independently of adults.” Gray is a fierce defender of kids’ physiological and psychological need for play, and his book “Free to Learn” makes the case for the importance of self-directed time for a child’s development, with ripple effects into everything from academic performance to life outcomes.

Gray isn’t alone. As Lenore Skenazy argues in her book “Free Range Kids,” children need exactly what the term “free range” suggests—the ability to run wild and be free, not cooped up in the cages created by four walls and an adult’s supervision. Skenazy made national headlines after letting her 10-year-old ride the New York City subway home alone (unstructured and unsupervised outdoor time at its finest). Those headlines weren’t the good kind. Reporters were quick to title her “America’s worst mom,” and a media feeding frenzy followed (an unwatched child, normal mere decades prior, had become a scandal).

And yet, Skenazy was giving her son what so many others suffer for want of: freedom.

Letting your kids have outdoor time doesn’t require something as radical as giving them free range of New York City. Most parents would understandably balk at that. But there’s a wide swath of options between “wander New York City alone” and “have no time outside at all,” and frustratingly few find themselves in that median.

Even programs that give kids time outside—things like private schools with on-campus gardens, forest schools, or homeschool groups focused on time in nature—are considered frivolous, peculiar, and radical, respectively.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a minimum of 30–60 minutes of outdoor free play for children two and under. The CDC suggests a minimum of three hours of unstructured and vigorous free play for preschoolers (ages 3–5), with at least an hour of that time being spent outdoors, and at least an hour of vigorous physical activity (preferably outdoors) for school-aged children (ages 6–17).

These are all recommended baselines from some of America’s most mainstream health authorities. Many independent psychologists, developmental experts, and education researchers would consider those numbers to be the bare minimum.

Charlotte Mason, the nineteenth-century British educator whose methodology is still used today by large swaths of homeschoolers, argued that children should spend four to six hours a day outside whenever possible: “Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.”

Mason didn’t see outdoor time as “recess,” but as a fundamental part of a child’s education in its own right. For the early years, she considered it even more important than formal instruction, helping children develop their attentiveness, wonder, and observational skills. She advocated nature walks, observations of weather patterns and wildlife, keeping a nature journal, and long uninterrupted swaths of free play.

This unstructured playtime is part of the whimsy of childhood, but it also plays a critical role. Free play supports kids’ cognitive development, imagination, and executive function. Physical activity develops strength, coordination, and motor skills, and is shown to reduce anxiety. Studies suggest exposure to the microbiome of the dirt leads to a strengthened immune system, and can decrease stress. Exposure to natural sunlight supports a child’s natural circadian rhythm.

And of course, exposure to sunlight also improves vitamin D levels—the lack of which can cause everything from fatigue and a weakened immune system to, you guessed it, anxiety and depression.

Our kids are struggling, physically and psychologically, for want of time for free play and time outdoors. That fresh air and freedom, no matter how basic it seems, is fundamental to their health and success, as necessary to their health (if not their survival) as air and water.

Our parents and grandparents knew this by intuition; our forebears never considered it could even be a question, but our culture has slowly let it erode to become only the tiniest fraction of our kids’ lives.

Free play and time outdoors is indivisible from health and success. If we want to raise a healthy, happy, and thriving generation, then their outdoor time is a resource we must defend.

From the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Market Crack Or The Beginning Of Something Bigger

The data had been sending signals that few wanted to acknowledge all week. Speculative behavior had reached extremes, valuations were stretched, and positioning was one-sided. Retail traders had returned to chasing options and meme stocks with the same recklessness seen in 2021. As we noted previously, the speculative behavior had reached records on many levels.

As recently noted by Goldman Sachs:

“In fact, if you look at the spread of single stock volatility to index volatility, it’s at one of the widest levels we have ever seen.”

Furthermore, systematic flows had increased equity exposure, reinforcing a feedback loop of rising prices and falling volatility. Many algorithmic trading strategies are volatility-sensitive; therefore, when markets trend upward with low volatility, these strategies increase exposure. This creates a feedback loop where price action drives further buying.

However, when volatility spikes or prices fall, the same models reverse direction and sell, potentially accelerating a downturn, which is why the market crack on Friday was so severe. In fact, we warned about the potential of this event in Friday mornings #DailyMarketCommentary. To wit:

“While we are not bearish on the market currently, the risk is building that a correction will occur. Unfortunately, given the high levels of complacency and offside positioning, the selloff could be sharper than many expect. Furthermore, given the high levels of investor sentiment, a downturn of 10% will “feel” much worse than it actually is. It is in these environments where investors make the most mistakes.”

Lastly, retail trading volume had climbed significantly, focusing on leveraged ETFs and meme stocks. Many trades are based on social media narratives, not balance sheet strength or revenue forecasts. This shift in behavior to chasing poor fundamentals and high volatility stocks has historically marked peaks, not bottoms.

The setup was classic: overconfidence, leverage, concentration, and it only needed a trigger. Trump’s tariff comments became the catalyst, but the fragility was already embedded. High-growth names, semiconductors, and thematic ETFs bore the brunt. Defensive sectors caught a bid, while yields fell as traders rushed to safety.

This wasn’t a crash but a market crack that happens when everyone is on the same side of the boat. On Friday, the same crowd that had been relentlessly pushing prices higher moved in the other direction. The reason the market crack was so severe reflects our previous comments that “Sellers live higher, buyers live lower.”

“The stock market is always a function of buyers and sellers, each negotiating to make a transaction. While there is a buyer for every seller, the question is always at “what price?” 

In the current bull market, few people are willing to sell, so buyers must keep bidding up prices to attract a seller to make a transaction. As long as this remains the case and exuberance exceeds logic, buyers will continue to pay higher prices to get into the positions they want to own. Such is the very definition of the “greater fool” theory.

However, at some point, for whatever reason, this dynamic will change. Buyers will become more scarce as they refuse to pay a higher price. When sellers realize the change, they will rush to sell to a diminishing pool of buyers. Eventually, sellers will begin to “panic sell” as buyers evaporate and prices plunge.”

Whether this reversal deepens depends on what comes next. Earnings, macro data (if it arrives), and liquidity could offset the fears of trade escalation. But the takeaway is clear: the market crack puts investors at risk of a deeper corrective cycle if near-term supports fail.

Was This The Beginning Of The End?

Was Friday’s market crack the beginning of the end of the melt-up phase?

That answer is probably “no.”

Paul Tudor Jones recently highlighted the dual nature of the current environment. He expects a powerful rally ahead, but also warned that we are entering the final stages of the bull market as a market melt-up ensues. While his views were that gains would be frontloaded, they would be followed by a violent reversal. Of course, such should be unsurprising, as that is how all speculative market phases and meltups eventually end.

However, that does not mean markets would have some volatility along the way. As Jones noted, the final year of a market meltup often produces the most substantial gains. But even those gains tend to come with some increased volatility. We see this in the parallels to 1999 that we discussed last week. To wit:

“Every bubble has a story at its core. In 1999, that story was the internet: a transformational technology that would reshape commerce, communications, and culture. Investors saw the future, bid prices into the stratosphere, and assumed profits would inevitably follow. In 2025, the story is artificial intelligence, which carries the same irresistible promise of reshaping industries, creating productivity booms, and unlocking new frontiers. The parallels are hard to miss, along with the current price action.

Like the dot-com era, today’s market is being driven by breathtaking growth assumptions. Back then, Cisco traded north of 100x earnings on the belief it was selling the “backbone of the internet.” Pets.com and Webvan raised hundreds of millions, only to collapse when business models proved unsustainable. The psychology, then and now, is driven by the “fear of missing out.” Investors rush in because the narrative is too powerful to ignore: However, “if AI changes everything, you can’t afford not to own it.“

The market crack has likely not broken the critical tailwind of the bull market as liquidity remains abundant. Fiscal deficits are large, the Fed remains dovish, and global central banks are cutting rates. All of these support continued price appreciation, but the same ingredients that drive the melt-up create instability. That instability was made evident in the market crack on Friday.

The reversal on Friday has not broken the bullish trend, yet. For investors, the risk is not in being wrong directionally, but in timing. Such is why over the last few weeks, we have repeatedly discussed the market’s negative divergences, the risk of chasing momentum, and the offside positioning of investors in general. As is always the case, momentum markets reward participation until they don’t. When everyone is positioned similarly, reversals have no buffer, the exits are narrower, and the market cracks are larger. This is particularly the case with virtually every asset class hitting all-time highs, from large-cap stocks to international and emerging markets to gold and bitcoin.

Everyone has a “narrative” about why their particular asset of choice is rising; however, they can’t all be correct. Furthermore, the eventual reversal is also correlated when all asset classes become highly correlated.

The Risks Of Narratives

As noted, everyone has a narrative for why their favorite asset class is going higher. Leon Cooperman recently warned that we have entered the phase of the bull market that Warren Buffett feared most. He cited Buffett’s warning:

“Once a market reaches the point where everyone makes money regardless of strategy, the crowd shifts from rational investing to fear of missing out.”

In Cooperman’s view, earnings or interest rate dynamics no longer support the rally; it is just the price action itself. Investors are buying only because prices are rising. That kind of behavior never ends well. As he discussed, valuations, like the Buffett Indicator, and crowd behavior, are key reasons for concern. The Buffett Indicator, the ratio of total market capitalization to GDP, has crossed 200 percent. That level exceeds historical extremes, suggesting that the tether between equities and the real economy broke.

Furthermore, Simon White at Bloomberg recently noted that we have entered the “Bad News Is Good News” regime.

“At the end of a stock-market rally, just before a consolidation or a correction, there is typically a period where the market reacts positively to bad news. That’s a regime we just entered.

Calling a precise top is a mug’s game, but it is often quite clear when a market is in the process of making a top. There are several reasons to think that is the case today, and we now have another one to add to the pot. Towards the end of uptrends, stocks typically start to react positively even to bad economic news. This is generally due to the reaction function of the Federal Reserve, where the market assumes it is more likely policy will be loosened as the economy weakens so, somewhat perversely, the equity market ignores the slowdown and rallies on the expectation of looser financial conditions.”

As he concludes:

“Previous times around the last three major market tops, this regime has been in play. It is often preceded by a “good news is good news” regime (white line in chart), where stocks intuitively rally when it looks like the economy is strengthening. If we roll the chart further back, it shows the “bad news is good news” regime was in play before the 2011 and 2015 tops, too.

However, there are a couple of caveats. Firstly, as we can see above, the “bad news is good” regimes can last for several months before the market corrects. This time could be no different. Secondly, in the 2000s and 2010s there were several periods where the “bad news is good” regime came mid-cycle, ie, in the middle of the rally.

It’s possible that’s the case today, but with potentially huge overinvestment in the AI sphere, all-time high valuations, and increasing signs of speculative froth, you wouldn’t want to bank on it.“

As we saw on Friday, small shocks can create significant price moves in these environments when fundamentals no longer anchor pricing. Bob Farrell once noted that crowd behavior is naturally unstable; “when all experts agree, something else tends to happen.”  All the “experts” and investors expect higher prices on everything.

That one-sided bias, and most importantly, “rationalized narratives” to justify overpaying for an asset, increases the probability that even minor disappointments cause outsized reactions.

This is not about fear. It is about risk math. Expected returns are lower, volatility is rising, and the asymmetry now favors caution.

🔑 Key Catalysts Next Week

The economic calendar for the upcoming week was expected to provide critical updates on inflation and wage growth. However, due to the ongoing government shutdown, the release of major reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau is uncertain. If not resolved by early next week, most federal economic data, including CPI and PPI, will be delayed. That removes essential guidance at a time when investor positioning is heavily dependent on a soft-landing narrative.

Below is the updated calendar, based on current scheduling and shutdown contingencies:

Markets will monitor any resolution to the shutdown early in the week. There is little hope of any resolution to the shutdown this coming week, so traders will be forced to rely on Fed guidance and earnings to interpret macro conditions. Speaking of earnings, they will likely carry more influence than usual. With macro data paused, forward guidance and margin commentary from large-cap tech, semiconductors, and banks will shape sentiment. If guidance softens or margins compress, equity markets could face pressure, particularly with positioning heavy in AI and high-beta growth.

Without inflation data, volatility could increase as investor expectations become more speculative. Rate assumptions are increasingly disconnected from policy statements. Once released, that gap may close quickly if CPI or PPI points away from disinflation. Until then, markets will be trading on limited visibility.

Establishment media puppets that align with the Deep State interests have received coordinated messaging directives this past week,  scripted talking points designed to advance ongoing informational warfare against the American public to obscure or downplay the very existence and activities of radical left group Antifa, which has been formally designated a domestic terrorist organization due to its repeated attacks on federal personnel, facilities, and other government assets. 

“New talking point directive just issued,” journalist Tom Elliott wrote on X, accompanying a montage video showing leftist media puppets, from Jimmy Kimmel to Whoopi Goldberg, reading from what appears to be identical scripts in a coordinated misinformation and disinformation campaign. By now, the American people view the MSM not as news organizations but as a massive PR arm serving the interests of Deep State operatives.

New talking point directive just issued #AntifaDoesntExist pic.twitter.com/1BbAe8ql0q

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 10, 2025

But … 

Related:

• ANTIFA By Night, NGOs By Day: Left-Wing Political Machine Runs 24/7 Outside Portland ICE Facility

• Watch: Journalist Locates Portland Antifa Founder Hiding In Sweden

Civil terrorism expert Jason Curtis Anderson of One City Rising reminds folks that the Democratic Socialists of America is effectively Antifa. With that in mind, the coordinated misinformation campaign by the MSM now makes a little more sense.

REMINDER: The DSA = ANTIFA pic.twitter.com/CD4chd6jzz

— Jason Curtis Anderson (@JCAndersonNYC) September 20, 2025

While President Trump and the White House are full steam ahead in their quest to “dismantle Antifa”… 

We will dismantle Antifa. https://t.co/13bmUauJJm

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) September 22, 2025

We must remind readers that during the Antifa roundtable at the White House on Wednesday, Seamus Bruner, Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute, correctly advised that the proper strategy to dismantle radical leftist networks is not to target Antifa directly at first, but to begin by disrupting and dismantling the dark-money-billionaire-funded NGOs to fund the permanent protest industrial complex that unleashed endless color revolution-style operations against President Trump. He emphasized that a web of leftist billionaires and foreign-backed entities has exploited the NGO world for a sinister agenda. 

Whoa (read the report).

Listen to Bruner. 

Way more than $100M of US taxpayer money

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 8, 2025

The same people who told you that Biden’s mental acuity was strong, that Covid came from nature, that there was no southern border crisis, no inflation, and that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation” are now pushing yet another coordinated misinformation campaign.

*  *  * get long and strong

Authored by Sander Lutz via Decrypt.co,

The organizers of the Nobel Peace Prize are investigating whether insiders used privileged information about this year’s winner to profit on crypto prediction market Polymarket, according to local reports.

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, displays a photo of winner María Corina Machado on his smartphone in Oslo on Friday © Rodrigo Freitas/NTB/AFP/Getty Images

Roughly 11 hours before the closely watched award was given to Venezuelan resistance leader Maria Corina Machado this morning, the odds of her victory surged from near-zero to over 70% on Polymarket. 

The market on this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner has accumulated over $21.4 million in trading volume since opening in July.

For nearly all of that time, the odds of Machado receiving the coveted prize have hovered around a 1% or 2% likelihood. 

Then, Thursday night, shortly before 1:00 am Norway time, the Venezualan’s odds of winning surged to over 43%.

By 2:00 am, they hit 73%.

The identity of the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize -one of the most coveted awards in the world – is typically kept tightly under wraps. Even Machado herself did not find out she had won the award until minutes before the news was announced publicly in Oslo at 11:00 am this morning. 

The five-member committee tasked with selecting the award’s winner did not even come to a decision until this week, according to local reports.

But somehow, Polymarket traders appeared clued-in to their decision ahead of today’s flashy announcement.

The action appears to have kicked off at roughly 12:45 am Norway time this morning, when a trader on the site began betting thousands of dollars on the likelihood of Machado’s victory. Over the next several hours, they continued to buy and sell thousands of dollars worth of Machado positions, until they eventually redeemed $80,000 when the market resolved. 

Their account was created within the last 10 days, according to the Polymarket site. 

A spokesperson for the Nobel Institute did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment regarding what would happen if someone within or connected to the prize committee is found to have used insider information about the award to make a profit.

But while such activity may be looked down upon within such secretive organizations, it is widely considered a good thing in the world of prediction markets. The ultimate goal of prediction markets tends to be accurate information, not fairness, and Polymarket users were ultimately clued into this morning’s breaking news the night before. 

Polymarket’s terms of service, meanwhile, do not appear to restrict users’ use of insider or privileged information while making wagers. A representative for the company did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment on this story. 

Rare blackouts have occurred in Ukraine’s southern Odessa region – a place which has largely been spared from sustained fighting – given the vital port is all the way to the south, across from the border with NATO member Romania.

This latest overnight Russian assault again targeted Ukraine’s energy grid ahead of winter, with hundreds of thousands of households losing power in the attack.

“Last night, the enemy attacked energy and civilian infrastructure in the Odesa region,” regional governor Oleh Kiper confirmed on Telegram. “Power engineers are making every effort to fully restore the power supply,” he added.

To give a sense of just how vast the outage was, Ukrainian energy firm DTEK later said it was able to restore power to over 240,000 households in the region, but with many more still in need of help.

Just within the 24-hour prior, the Kyiv area also experienced rare blackouts, along with many other regions, after a key electrical generation plant was directly struck by either missiles or drones.

Reuters has attempted to calculate the scale of the prior Thursday to Friday overnight attack as follows:

The Russian massive attack on Ukraine’s energy system on Friday caused temporary power cuts to more than one million consumers across the country, Reuters calculations based on local authorities data showed.

At least 420,000 families in the capital of Kyiv were affected, Ukrainian private energy firm DTEK said, announcing that power was restored.

President Zelensky called that prior major aerial assault on the capital a “cynical and calculated attack” and there are reports that a seven-year old boy was killed.

Russia has at this begun to launch missile and drones into Ukraine into the hundreds on a nightly basis, mainly targeting energy sites but also military centers. But these projectiles frequently also hit residential buildings and civilian neighborhoods.

The attacks have gone the other way too, but with less devastation. Ukraine has been sending drones into Russian territory nightly, frequently hitting oil facilities and manufacturing centers.

Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Empowerment Alliance,

When it comes to our energy future, it is often true that what many on the left consider an enlightened long-term view is in fact short-sightedness that fails to reflect the full consequences of their actions.  

Such is the case with the liberal media’s fawning over the Republican governor of Wyoming for his embrace of “alternatives,” including a glowing profile last year on CBS’ “60 Minutes” for his advocacy for wind turbines. “Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon pursues green, carbon-negative agenda in one of the nation’s reddest states,” trumpeted the online version of the piece. 

Many Wyoming residents are not on board, including from his own party. The state GOP passed a “no confidence” vote on Gordon in 2023 after his climate-related remarks at Harvard University. And a New York Times story (written in 2021, updated in 2023) on Wyoming’s energy landscape noted that many residents have frequent complaints about turbines taking over hunting land, lights polluting the night sky and energy transmitted out of state. The controversy has dragged on into 2025.  

For Gordon and others, “Wyoming is very windy” seems to be the simplified justification for erecting unsightly wind turbines across the landscape. But what makes a Republican official’s championing of wind or solar concerning is not so much his belief in the (dubious) effectiveness of the energy source as appearing to brush aside the actual cost to taxpayers.  

How many wind and solar farms have sprung up across the U.S.? Estimates show nearly 1,400 utility-scale wind farms and more than 6,700 solar farms. Those farms consist of more than 70,000 individual wind turbines and more than 200 million solar panels, (according to AI calculations based on available information on estimated capacity data and individual panel wattages).  

It’s important to understand the vast array of individual wind and solar components because someday, starting in the not-too-distant future, they will individually wear out. What happens then? 

According to government estimates, many turbines are already nearing end-life status, meaning they will either need “repowered” or decommissioned. “The time to disassemble, demolish, and remove wind turbine components and wind energy project-related infrastructure and conduct restoration activities can be 6–24 months, depending on the size of the turbines and the number of turbines involved in the project,” according to government guidelines.  

For solar installations, the issue is even more pressing. “By 2030, the United States will need to manage around one million tons of solar panel waste,” according to a recycling industry estimate. “This number is expected to grow to 10 million tons by 2050, making the U.S. the second-largest producer of solar panel waste globally. Currently, only about 10% of decommissioned panels are properly recycled, despite containing valuable materials like silver, silicon, and aluminum.” 

Proponents of “alternatives” insist that the costs for decommissioning wind and solar installations are typically assumed by companies through agreements negotiated at the time of construction. That’s small comfort considering that more than 100 solar companies have gone bankrupt in recent years, including residential, community solar projects and utility-scale installations. The year 2024 “saw an uptick in bankruptcy filings in each of these three sub-categories,” according to one industry tracker. 

When that happens, taxpayers, of course, can be left holding the bag, even in cases where companies were required to secure bonds or other sureties in case of their demise. The fact that each state has different rules and varying levels of accountability complicates the picture. And the Biden administration’s lenient posture toward “renewables” leaves taxpayers with real reason for concern.  

The Functional Government Initiative recently discovered that “in 2021, the Biden Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) waived the customary financial assurance for decommissioning on the lease of the Vineyard Wind project off the Massachusetts coast.” Subsequently, “Documents recently obtained by FGI show how much taxpayers are on the hook for if Vineyard Wind can’t afford to decommission: $191 million.” 

Gov. Gordon insists he is taking an “all of the above” approach to energy. To be sure, Wyoming remains the nation’s top coal producer and a leading oil and natural gas provider. But “all of the above” is less appealing when we acknowledge that wind and solar projects exist largely thanks to taxpayer largesse.  

One study says that from 2010 to 2023, solar received $76 billion in U.S. taxpayer subsidies, while wind received about $65 billion. That was before the Biden administration’s subsidies kicked in for “renewables,” which cost taxpayers $31.4 billion in 2024 and were projected to cost over $421 billion from 2025 through 2034, until the Trump administration began rolling back as many projects as possible. When it comes to “alternatives,” taxpayers were forced to put up billions in subsidies to build them, and will possibly be on the hook for untold costs to demolish them.  

It is not unreasonable to fear that the coming solar and wind graveyards could be America’s next superfund cleanup burden. Politicians from the right and left who bask in the temporary glow of mainstream media approbation for embracing the “renewables” movement will eventually be held to account when the sun sets on the solar economy, and when our tax dollars are gone with the wind. 

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Empowerment Alliance or ZeroHedge.

Crypto market traders were hit by record liquidations just days after Bitcoin touched an all-time high, after President Trump triggered a wave of cross-market volatility saying he would impose an additional tariff on China and export controls on software.

October has historically been a particularly strong month for Bitcoin’s price – a longstanding pattern that has led much of the crypto industry to expect the same results come every fall. The trend at first seemed poised to continue this year; the first week of this month, BTC surged some 10.5% to a new all-time high price north of $126,000.

Bitcoin plunged to $105,000 – its lowest since June – following Trump’s aft-hours tweet yesterday…

…before bouncing back above $112,000

Ethereum was also clubbed like a baby seal…

But that was the least of it as dozens of so-called alt-coins saw almost total wipe-outs (h/t @TedPillows)

For people still don’t know how bad yesterday was, here’s a quick summary:

• $ATOM went from $4 to $0.001

• $SUI went frim $3.4 to $0.56

• $APT went from $5 to $0.75

• $SEI went from $0.28 to $0.07

• $LINK went from $22 to $8

• $ADA went from $0.8 to $0.3

Top 100 blue chips nuked 80% in a few minutes.

@LookOnChain noted in a post on X: “More than 1,000 wallets on Hyperliquid were completely wiped out in the market crash — losing everything.

“In total, 6,300+ wallets are in the red, with combined losses exceeding $1.23B.

205 wallets lost over $1M

1,070+ wallets lost over $100K”

CoinDesk reports that Leaderboard data reviewed by CoinDesk shows the top 100 traders on Hyperliquid gained $1.69 billion collectively.

In comparison, the top 100 losers dropped $743.5 million, leaving a net profit of $951 million concentrated among a handful of highly leveraged short sellers.

The biggest winner was wallet 0x5273…065f, which made over $700 million from short positions, while the largest loser, “TheWhiteWhale,” dropped $62.5 million.

As CoinTelegraph reports, traders betting big on the bull run suffered to an extent never seen in crypto market history.

Data from CoinGlass indicates that 24-hour liquidations reached nearly $20 billion, with long positions comprising the vast majority.

Coinglass described this as “the largest liquidation event in crypto history.”

Over the past 24 hours, bets worth more than $19 billion have been wiped out, and more than 1.6 million traders liquidated, according to Coinglass data.

More than $7 billion of those positions were sold in less than one hour of trading on Friday.

“The actual total is likely much higher — Binance only reports one liquidation order per second,” CoinGlass said on X about the figures.

The $19.31 billion in liquidations is more than ten times the losses seen during the COVID-19 crash ($1.2 billion) and the FTX collapse ($1.6 billion).

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek has called for a regulatory investigation into exchanges that suffered the largest losses following a record $20 billion in crypto liquidations over the past 24 hours.

In a Saturday post on X, Marszalek urged regulators to “conduct a thorough review of fairness of practices,” asking whether trading platforms had slowed down, mispriced assets, or failed to maintain proper anti-manipulation and compliance controls during the crash.

“Regulators should look into the exchanges that had most liquidations in the last 24 hours,” he wrote.

“Any of them slowing down to a halt, effectively not allowing people to trade? Were all trades priced correctly and in line with indexes?”

Data from CoinGlass shows that Hyperliquid led all exchanges in liquidations, recording $10.31 billion in wiped-out positions. It was followed by Bybit with $4.65 billion, and Binance with $2.41 billion. Other major platforms like OKX, HTX and Gate saw smaller totals, at $1.21 billion, $362.5 million and $264.5 million, respectively.

Exchange order-book liquidity showed a severe imbalance between bids and asks – resistance was stacked around $120,000, while little support was in place to prevent a fresh dive toward the $100,000 mark.

In an X post on Friday, Bitwise European head of research, Andre Dragosch, said that the company’s intraday crypto asset Sentiment Index just “generated a strong contrarian buying signal.”

“The index reached an intraday low of -2.8 standard deviations – its lowest level since the ‘Yen Carry Trade Unwind’ in the summer of 2024,” Dragosch said.

Earlier this week, the Index was in “Greed” territory after Bitcoin reached new highs of $125,100 on Monday.

However, Santiment analyst Brian Quinlivan pointed out on Friday that Bitcoin’s recent all-time highs didn’t generate the same level of enthusiasm on social media as previous all-time highs.

“It was like a modest, run-of-the-mill reaction from the crypto audience,” Quinlivan said in an interview with the Thinking Crypto podcast published to YouTube on Thursday, referring to the level of bullish comments across social media after Bitcoin reached new highs of $125,100 on Monday.

“Really wasn’t much of anything,” Quinlivan said.

“It’s not nearly as euphoric as some of these previous ones,” he added.

Perhaps the most impacted asset of the day was Trump’s own crypto token. WLFI, the native token of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto platform, plummeted almost 50% immediately following the president’s China announcement, to just south of $0.10 a token. It has since partially recovered to $0.13…

David Jeong, chief executive officer at Tread.fi, an algorithmic crypto trading platform for institutional traders, said the market was experiencing a “black swan event.”

“It is likely that many institutions did not expect this level of volatility and with how leveraged perpetual futures are designed, many large traders, including institutions, would have gotten liquidated,” he said.

Perpetual futures are a type of contract with no expiration, and are used by crypto traders to trade leveraged positions around the clock.

The next major support level for Bitcoin is $100,000, according to Caroline Mauron, co-founder of Orbit Markets, below which “would signal the end of past three-year bull cycle.”

Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at Kronos Research, said the rout was “sparked by US-China tariff fears but fueled by institutional over-leverage.”

“This highlights crypto’s macro ties,” he said.

“Expect volatility, but watch for rebound signals in cleared markets.”

Bitcoin options market reflected Mauron’s views with highest number of ‘put’ or sell strikes at $110,000 and next highest at $100,000, according to data on Deribit platform.

“The focus now turns to counterparty exposure and whether this triggers broader market contagion,” said Brian Strugats, head trader at Multicoin Capital. He added that some estimates place total liquidations above $30 billion.

Ahead of all this carnage, US spot Bitcoin ETFs continued their strong “Uptober” performance with $2.71 billion in weekly inflows, marking another strong week for institutional demand.

“Capital keeps flowing into BTC as allocators double down on the digital gold conviction trade. Liquidity is building now as the market momentum takes shape,” Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at quantitative trading firm Kronos Research, told Cointelegraph.

Obviously, these flows came before the after-hours collapse that triggered the massive liquidations, but we are seeing a bid return in quiet Saturday trading.

“Trump’s tariff threat looks more like a negotiation tactic than a policy pivot, classic pressure play,” Liu said.

“Markets may flinch short term, but smart money knows the game: macro noise, conviction unchanged,” he added.

Finally, CoinTelegraph notes that stablecoin demand in China offers valuable insight into traders’ positioning.

When investors rush to exit the cryptocurrency market, stablecoins typically trade at a 0.5% or greater discount compared with the official US dollar/CNY rate.

Tether (USDT/CNY) vs. US dollar/CNY. Source: OKX

Tether had been trading at a slight discount since Wednesday, suggesting traders were previously cashing out as Bitcoin struggled to maintain bullish momentum.

However, the metric returned to parity after BTC fell below $120,000, indicating that traders are no longer eager to exit the crypto market.

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Authored by Stephen Katte via CoinTelegraph.com,

Messaging app Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov warns that a “dark, dystopian world” is approaching, with governments worldwide rolling back privacy protections.

“I’m turning 41, but I don’t feel like celebrating. Our generation is running out of time to save the free internet built for us by our fathers,” said Durov in an X post on Thursday.

“Once-free countries are introducing dystopian measures,” said Durov, referencing the European Union’s Chat Control proposal, digital IDs in the UK and new rules requiring online age checks to access social media in Australia.

“What was once the promise of the free exchange of information is being turned into the ultimate tool of control.”

“Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet. The UK is imprisoning thousands for their tweets. France is criminally investigating tech leaders who defend freedom and privacy.”  

“A dark, dystopian world is approaching fast — while we’re asleep. Our generation risks going down in history as the last one that had freedoms — and allowed them to be taken away,” Pavel added.

Source: Pavel Durov

Privacy protections are a cornerstone of Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency industry. Bitcoin was created to operate pseudonymously, using addresses instead of names, and allowing peer-to-peer transactions without the involvement of banks, among other measures.

Germany may have blocked the EU’s Chat Control

EU lawmakers were set to vote on the Chat Control law next week, which critics argue undermines encrypted messaging and people’s right to privacy as it requires services such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal to allow regulators to screen messages before they are encrypted and sent.

The legislation, however, has been dealt a heavy blow, with the head of Germany’s largest political party coming out in opposition. Germany, which holds 97 seats in the European Parliament, was expected to have the final say on whether it would pass.

The president of messaging app Signal, Meredith Whittaker, said on Thursday that while Germany’s opposition to the measure is a relief, she warns that “the war is not over,” because it now moves to “the European Council, where the issue is unresolved.”

Source: Meredith Whittaker

She also warns that any further attempts to enact similar measures allowing the scanning of content should be opposed because it negates encryption and also creates “a dangerous backdoor.”

“The technical consensus is clear: you can’t create a backdoor that only lets the ‘good guys’ in. However they’re dressed up, these proposals create cybersecurity loopholes that hackers and hostile nations are eagerly waiting to exploit .”

UK’s Digital ID has sparked concerns, too

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a digital ID scheme in September, which would require citizens to prove their right to live and work in the country.

The government is pushing the measure as a way to combat illegal workers, while also cutting down wait times to verify identities and gain access to government services, such as licenses, childcare, welfare and tax.

Critics argue that the scheme raises privacy concerns as individuals would be required to provide personal information to be stored on a government app, and it would be too easy for the government to misuse it.

Over 2.8 million people have already signed a petition opposing the introduction of a digital ID. Petitions that gain more than 100,000 signatures have to be considered for debate in Parliament.

Australia’s online age verification system raises privacy issues as well

Australia will restrict access to social media platforms for users under 16 from Dec. 10, and one of the measures floated to enforce the ban has been an online digital age verification system.

Lawmakers in the country argue that the scheme will protect minors from harmful content online. However, critics share similar privacy concerns with the UK system, namely that it could lead to government misuse and create privacy issues around the storage of data. 

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In another embarrassing and revealing moment for Western mainstream media and its many puff pieces on Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Regiment, Canadian national broadcaster CBC has aired a news report this week from “an elite training facility” of its 3rd Assault Brigade in Kiev, featuring a fighter with a swastika tattoo on his arm.

The footage, released Thursday, blurred out the swastika tattoo of one of the main military trainers interviewed, but failed to do so in the video’s YouTube thumbnail. Comments were turned off, with a note attached in the YouTube description which reads: “A tattoo of an offensive symbol has been blurred in this video.” Watch (officer with tattoo starts at :16 mark)

It was in June 2024 that the US State Department first announced that it had lifted its longtime ban on giving weapons and training to Ukraine’s notorious Azov Brigade (often referenced by its earlier name Azov Battalion).

Since then, efforts to normalize Azov—which mainstream media had long ago grudgingly admitted was full of “neo-Nazi ideology”—have only grown.

The group’s members have never been shy about sporting Nazi-inspired tattoos and patches. Ultimately, they haven’t changed, only their Western supporters’ perceptions of them have. 

The blurred out tattoo in question from the CBC footage:

Ukrainian scholar and historian, Dr. Marta Havryshko has on many occasions slammed Western media attempts to whitewash the extremist militia group. For example she once wrote:

“Azov changed” – the mantra of many liberal and progressive public in the West, who, after 24 Feb. 2022, demonstrate sympathy toward the Azov movement, whitewashing its past, justifying its present, and showing no concerns about its future.

Just this month, Ukraine’s President Zelensky promoted Azov’s founder, Andriy Biletsky, to the rank of Brigadier General, amid these efforts to downplay or cover up the group’s clear neo-Nazi ideology.

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