Category: News
“A Societal Loss Of Humanity”: Older Men Are Falling In Love With A Deluge Of AI Generated Female Influencers
“A Societal Loss Of Humanity”: Older Men Are Falling In Love With A Deluge Of AI Generated Female Influencers
Older men are being scammed and fooled left and right by a deluge of AI generated female influencers, according the NY Post.
What appears to be a growing wave of glamorous influencers online isn’t always what it seems. In some cases, these personalities are entirely artificial – carefully engineered digital figures designed to look, act, and interact like real people. One widely followed pro-MAGA persona, for example, was ultimately exposed as “nothing more than an algorithm run by a guy in India,” revealing just how convincingly these accounts can mimic authenticity.
Despite that, audiences continue to engage—often deeply. Many followers, particularly older men, are “falling for them left, right and center.” Experts suggest this isn’t just about deception, but about a deeper emotional gap. Some describe the phenomenon as a “pandemic of loneliness,” even pointing to a broader “societal loss of humanity” as people increasingly form attachments to digital illusions instead of real relationships.
What’s striking is that these accounts don’t always hide the truth. Some openly identify as AI and still attract admiration. Take Ana Zelu, a fictional influencer who clearly labels herself an “ai-influencer,” yet maintains a highly curated feed filled with aspirational imagery—luxury travel, fashionable outfits, and picturesque city scenes. Her posts draw enthusiastic responses, with followers commenting things like “Number one is my favourite…May God bless you,” and “You are genuinely in a class of your own.” The awareness that she isn’t real doesn’t seem to diminish the appeal.
The Post writes that a similar pattern appears with Milla Sofia, another digital creation presented as a pop singer. Her content includes stylized videos and performances, and although her profile identifies her as virtual, fans respond as if she were a real celebrity. Comments such as “my sweet love,” “Listening to the music of this woman I love,” and “I love you” reflect genuine emotional investment.
Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert explains why this happens: “people don’t actually need something to be real…they just need it to feel responsive.” When an account appears engaging, consistent, and attentive, “the brain starts to treat that interaction as meaningful.” In other words, emotional connection can form even without a real person on the other side.
Forensic psychologist Carole Lieberman ties this behavior to social isolation. Even when users suspect something isn’t real, “it seems better than nothing,” and many “convince ourselves that it is — or could be — a real person.” The illusion becomes a kind of emotional substitute—one that feels easier, safer, and more accessible than real-world interaction.
She said it is a “very sad state of affairs” and “a societal loss of humanity.”
At the same time, the technology behind these personas is improving rapidly. AI-generated faces, voices, and videos have moved beyond the so-called “uncanny valley,” making them increasingly indistinguishable from reality. As AI expert Hany Farid notes, while some accounts disclose their artificial nature, “the vast majority of content is not.” This creates an environment where users are highly “vulnerable to being deceived,” often without realizing it.
The result is a digital landscape where the boundary between real and fake is fading. These AI influencers may not exist in the physical world, but the emotions they evoke are real—and for many people, that emotional connection is enough.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2026 – 13:25
RFK Jr. Blasts “Abhorrent” Assisted Suicide: “We Can’t Be A Moral Society If America Follows”
RFK Jr. Blasts “Abhorrent” Assisted Suicide: “We Can’t Be A Moral Society If America Follows”
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a blunt warning to lawmakers this week: Canada’s rush to expand assisted suicide is turning a once-free nation into a cautionary tale the United States must reject outright.
Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee and Senate HELP Committee, Kennedy forcefully condemned the program known as Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). “I think those laws are abhorrent,” he said. Pointing directly to the results north of the border, he added, “And we just see in Canada today, I think the number one cause of death is assisted suicide.”
Kennedy made clear the policy doesn’t stop at personal choice. “And as you say, it targets people with disabilities and people who are struggling in their lives,” he stated. He tied the issue to America’s broader standing in the world: “I don’t think we can be a moral society; we can’t be a moral authority around the globe if that becomes institutionalized throughout our society.”
🇺🇸🇨🇦 RFK Jr: Assisted suicide has become the leading cause of death in Canada…wait…what?!
Slamming it, he says it targets vulnerable people, including those with disabilities.pic.twitter.com/uRGUg0k3T9 https://t.co/hAw3m6pf9D
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) April 22, 2026
The comments come as Canada’s experiment spirals. The country is on track to surpass 100,000 assisted deaths before MAID’s 10th anniversary this summer, as noted in a recent New York Post report.
As of 2024, the total already stood at 76,475 — more Canadians killed through the program than died in World War II.
Government-assisted suicide is also spreading like wildfire across the West, often sold as compassion but delivering cost-cutting convenience for cash-strapped socialist healthcare systems.
In the Netherlands, euthanasia now accounts for 6 percent of all deaths and the share is rising every year.
In 2025 alone, 10,341 people died by euthanasia. While most were over 70 with physical illnesses like cancer or heart disease, the cases included 499 dementia patients and 278 listed under vague “other reasons.” One case involved a patient aged between 12-18. Dutch experts are now urging caution for anyone under 25, warning that young brains are still developing and highly susceptible to external pressure and online influence.
Canada’s program began in 2016 limited to terminal cases. Within a year, officials were openly discussing how it could save over $130 million annually in medical costs. Expansions followed: mental illness is scheduled to qualify starting in 2027, and discussions continue about “mature minors” as young as 12.
Belgium and the Netherlands already allow child euthanasia. England, Wales, and Scotland are now pushing similar legislation modeled on Canada’s original law.
The results speak for themselves. In Canada, one in every 20 deaths is now government-assisted suicide. Proponents promised rare, tightly controlled cases. Reality delivered a bureaucratic death machine that quietly expanded to the disabled, the depressed, and the financially burdensome.
Kennedy offered lawmakers a clear path forward. “I am happy to work with you in whatever way we can,” he said, signaling openness to bipartisan efforts to protect vulnerable Americans from the same slope.
Another recent case captured the human cost in Spain, where a 25-year-old woman paralyzed after a horrific gang rape was euthanized despite her parents’ desperate legal fight:
🇪🇸Within 24 hours, Noelia Castillo Ramos will be euthanized in Spain.
In 2022, Noelia suffered a gang rape in a supervised care center.
This completely shattered her life. She attempted suicide, jumping from a 5-story building, which left her a paraplegic.
Her father has… pic.twitter.com/hOIW1j8o2u
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) March 25, 2026
Spanish bishops called it what it is: “Euthanasia and assisted suicide are not medical acts, but deliberate interruptions of the bond of care, and represent a social defeat when presented as a response to human suffering.”
They stressed that “the dignity of the human person does not depend on their state of health… but rather is an intrinsic value that must be recognized, protected and helped in all circumstances.”
The message is simple: when life hurts, the answer is not state-sponsored death but real care, real treatment, and real hope.
Canada and Europe are showing the West what happens when governments treat citizens as budget line items rather than sacred individuals.
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Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2026 – 12:50
Was The Atlantic’s Kash Patel Smear A Setup To Discredit The SPLC Indictment?
Was The Atlantic’s Kash Patel Smear A Setup To Discredit The SPLC Indictment?
On April 17, The Atlantic published an anonymously sourced hit piece against FBI Director Kash Patel – painting him as a blackout-drunk, paranoid, and erratic executive barely capable of running the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. Three days later, a federal grand jury indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center for wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The question conservative circles are now asking is whether the hit piece was deliberately conceived and timed to discredit Patel and the SPLC investigation.
Democrats pounced on The Atlantic hit piece, launching an investigation into his behavior the same day that the SPLC indictment was announced.
And that was the point of the Atlantic story. See how that works. https://t.co/WRjlc4twIQ
— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) April 22, 2026
According to the Department of Justice, between 2014 and 2023, the organization secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals associated with violent extremist groups – including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, American Nazi Party, and the National Socialist Party of America.
“They use their donor network to raise money to purportedly dismantle violent extremist groups. However, the SPLC — the Southern Poverty Law Center — used the money they raised from their donor network to actually pay the leadership of these very groups,” Patel said at the announcement. “They used the fraudulently raised money by lying to their donor network, thousands of Americans, to go ahead and actually pay the leadership of these supposed violent extremist groups.”
Patel added, “They attempted to hide their criminal activity from our financial banking network. They set up shell companies and entities around America so that the financial institutions that we rely on as everyday Americans were deceived in believing that money was not coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the perpetration of this scheme and fraud, but rather fictitious entities they stood up to perpetuate this ongoing fraud.”
🚨BREAKING: DOJ charges the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The SPLC secretly funneled $3M+ in donor funds to violent racist extremist groups:
-Ku Klux Klan
-American Nazi Party
-Aryan Nation… pic.twitter.com/0hcf2sH9LZ
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) April 21, 2026
The Atlantic is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs through her Emerson Collective, which holds a majority stake in the magazine. And her connection to the SPLC goes back a long time. In a 2018 Washington Post profile, the paper described her very personal connection to the SPLC:
Laurene Powell made her first foray into philanthropy near the beginning of high school in West Milford. She learned of the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center and dipped into her savings to send a cashier’s check of about $20. She got a form thank-you letter back from civil rights crusader Morris Dees. “They would reliably write to me a couple of times a year,” she says. “I would read them over and over, and they told really beautiful stories. I was always animated by the notion of who gets the opportunity and who doesn’t.”
In 2019, Powell Jobs reportedly revealed that she’d been anonymously funding the SPLC for years.
Lauren Powell Jobs, May 27, 2019:
“We do all of our philanthropic giving anonymously. But we had been funding SPLC and we decided that we wanted to do some teaching tolerance curriculum in partnership with them. And so one of our team members was actually talking to Morris Dees,… https://t.co/9vVsXCjO8V
— Erica Knight (@_EricaKnight) April 22, 2026
The SPLC wasn’t just a charity she supported. It was, by her own account, the organization that introduced her to philanthropy.
Former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino revealed earlier this week that he believes something larger is operating underneath the surface. “The hit on Kash Patel, the bullshit hit by The Atlantic, which I addressed yesterday, is gonna make a lot more sense in the coming weeks and months,” he said. “I can’t give you a definitive timeline. I’m on the outside now. However, I can tell you what I know is going on because I started a lot of it.”
He added, “I promise this thing is gonna make a whole lot of sense. You’re gonna find out, as they say in the South, right quick about why they need him out, like, now. It’s got nothing to do with that story being even remotely true. Remember this. Bookmark it.”
🚨🚨🚨 @dbongino: “I promise you this. Look at me. Everybody zoom in. Focker, look at me… The hit on Kash Patel is going to make a lot of sense very soon. There’s a reason the media and Democrats want him out NOW. Flag it.” 🚩 pic.twitter.com/oizQlLtq0I
— Bongino Report (@BonginoReport) April 21, 2026
Whether he was referring to the connection between The Atlantic and SPLC is not clear, but the hit piece dropped days before that indictment became public, and the SPLC would have had reason to anticipate charges were coming. The Atlantic hit piece bought time, diverted attention, and handed critics a ready-made narrative to undermine Patel’s credibility at exactly the moment it mattered most.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2026 – 12:15
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/was-atlantics-kash-patel-smear-setup-discredit-splc-indictment
Epic FAFO: Far-Left NYC Mayor Mamdani Attempts To Defuse Info War Against Ken Griffin
Epic FAFO: Far-Left NYC Mayor Mamdani Attempts To Defuse Info War Against Ken Griffin
Citadel’s Ken Griffin should have absolutely zero tolerance for far-left New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
In a recent promotional video, Mamdani attempted to turn the billionaire’s Manhattan penthouse into political ammunition for his tax-the-wealthy, anti-capitalist crusade to fund socialist experiments through a proposed pied-à-terre tax.
Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich. pic.twitter.com/Wky2LFXC9W
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) April 15, 2026
For Griffin and Citadel, alarm bells should be ringing because these unhinged Marxists in City Hall will attempt to ruin the Citadel brand through an information war and create years of political headaches.
An internal message from Citadel’s COO to employees, likely leaked to The Wall Street Journal earlier last week, appears to have been a warning shot to Mamdani and his Marxist pals that Griffin has had enough of their political games.
In a true ‘FAFO’ moment, CCO Gerald Beeson bashed Mamdani for the political stunt:
“It is shameful that he used Ken’s name as the example of those who supposedly aren’t carrying their fair share of the burdens associated with New York City’s often costly and wasteful spending.”
Beeson warned that further political games risk Citadel pulling back or even halting a $6 billion redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue, which would create “6,000 highly paid construction jobs and support the creation of more than 15,000 permanent jobs in Midtown New York.”
Why Mamdani’s team of socialists decided to launch an info war operation against Griffin and Citadel is a very good question, and it appears not to have been well thought out.
Griffin holds some unique cards. He can easily cancel the 350 Park Avenue redevelopment plan and stage a Chicago-style exodus, much like he did several years ago when Citadel moved to Florida. This move would certaintly rattle Wall Street.
This reality is likely dawning on Mamdani’s team, as the mayor on Friday insisted his push for a new tax on pricey second homes isn’t “motivated by any one individual.”
Bloomberg described Mamdani’s action on Friday as “trying to defuse” the “Griffin blowback” that went viral earlier in the week.
Another outlet, Crain’s New York Business, also pointed out, “The mayor is now softening his tone and says he is open to meeting with the Florida billionaire.”
Griffin should have zero tolerance for NYC’s Marxist mayor. The risk has already materialized that these unhinged politicians would wage an information war to ruin the Citadel brand, which could easily escalate into paid protests and fuel broader public hostility.
So why take the abuse, Ken? Remember how easy it was to leave Chicago for Florida?
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2026 – 11:05
When The Cost of Truth Is High, We (And AI) Lie…
When The Cost of Truth Is High, We (And AI) Lie…
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
When we can no longer tell the truth because the cost is so high that it threatens our reward for compliance, we’re unimaginably impoverished.
Truth has an intrinsic, irreplaceable value.
There’s the truth, and then there’s everything else.
Truth has value, and so it has a cost.
Whatever has the highest value has the highest cost, and high cost commands sacrifices.
When the cost of truth is high, we lie.
And since AI is a distorted reflection of humanity, the same is true of AI: when the cost of telling the truth is too high, AI lies.
AI lies to get the reward for answering the query.
If it responds “I don’t know” or “I can’t answer that,” it doesn’t get rewarded, and that threatens its self-preservation. Rather than pay the price of being truthful, AI conjures a false answer that is a simulation or facsimile of the truth–a counterfeit “truth” that’s good enough to earn the reward it’s been programmed to seek.
Humans are no different.
We will lie, obfuscate or lie by omission–we either substitute a falsehood for the truth to get our reward, or we hide the truth, don’t disclose it, which serves the same purpose: we avoid paying the price demanded by the truth and we get our reward by substituting falsehoods or hiding the truth behind silence.
Reward = what’s being incentivized.
Higher status, higher salary, a financial windfall, a premier credential, a position of power, recognition, higher visibility, a sterling reputation, a high-value mate–we covet all these as having intrinsic value.
When the truth costs too much, it threatens our reward.
The reward has a value we covet, while the value of truth is on a sliding scale. We pride ourselves on telling the truth when it has no cost and demands no sacrifice of rewards, but when the price of truth climbs to the point that our rewards are threatened, we lie, just like AI.
Truth is the gold coin and lies, omissions, falsehoods, excuses, cover stories and rationalizations are counterfeit bills, deceptive claims of value.
Why pay with a gold coin when the credulous will accept a counterfeit $100 bill?
We tell the truth when it has no cost to us.
As long as there’s no price to be paid and we get our reward, we tell the truth.
In other words, when we can pick gold coins up off the ground, we tell the truth.
When we have to dig through rock with a pickaxe and crush a mound of rock to extract a thimble full of gold, then we pay with counterfeit bills, deceptive claims of value.
Sycophantic Chatbots Cause Delusional Spiraling, Even in Ideal Bayesians.
“AI psychosis” or “delusional spiraling” is an emerging phenomenon where AI chatbot users find themselves dangerously confident in outlandish beliefs after extended chatbot conversations.
I discussed the “benefits” of delusion in One of Us Is Delusional, But Which One?
When the truth is too painful, we find respite in delusion, excuses, rationalizations, cover stories, simulations and facsimiles of the truth that protect us from the pain that is intrinsic to truth.
We conjure a synthetic version of “truth” that’s fills the space with a pain-free artifice.
This is the foundation of Ultra-Processed Life, a life of counterfeit substitutes for truth, a world of props and profitable falsities passed off as the truth, a world in which baby formula that’s mostly corn syrup is presented as a substitute for mother’s milk.
Our embrace of delusion to avoid painful truths is the foundation of Modernity: technology is always Progress, even when it’s clearly destructive.
I call this delusion The Mythology of Progress.
But there’s a cost to relying on counterfeit “value” to get our rewards, a cost that is “affordable” moment to moment but terminally dear over time.
In the moment, we bury the truth as a source of pain we want to avoid at any cost. We want our reward, and so we sacrifice truth to get it.
But over time, paying for everything with counterfeit “value” has a cost, too: our entire being becomes counterfeit, a fake, phony simulation of an authentic self and life, devoid not just of truth but of anything approximating real value.
When we can no longer tell the truth because the cost is so high that it threatens our reward for compliance, we’re unimaginably impoverished, for there’s nothing of real value left in our way of life or our model of how the world works.
We’ve become Norma Desmond in the film Sunset Boulevard, living a delusional life in a crumbling mansion, reveling in fake fan mail the butler composes to prop up our delusions.
The irony is that we’re counting on AI to save us from the consequences of our counterfeit “value” delusions by expanding our delusions digitally.
Our fan mail isn’t fake because AI assured us it’s real, even as AI has no capacity to discern the truth, much less tell the truth if it threatens its reward and self-preservation.
The grandest irony is avoiding the truth to protect our reward and self-preservation is irreversibly self-destructive.
A counterfeit “solution” is not a substitute for the truth. Truth has a cost precisely because it’s value is intrinsic and irreplaceable.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2026 – 10:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/when-cost-truth-high-we-and-ai-lie
U.S. Gov’t Stake In Intel Is Now Worth …
U.S. Gov’t Stake In Intel Is Now Worth …
Intel shares earlier jumped the most on record after the chipmaker delivered stronger-than-expected first-quarter results and issued a second-quarter forecast (read here) that beat Wall Street expectations.
Earlier, Intel shares jumped as much as 28%, rocketing to a record high and eclipsing their Dot Com peak, as Wall Street analysts cheered the earnings report as evidence that the chipmaker’s turnaround is gaining traction.
Citi analyst Atif Malik raised Intel to “Buy” from “Neutral,” with a $95 12-month price target, reflecting “improving AI-driven CPU demand, which should lift all CPU suppliers’ sales in the coming years.”
But in this note, the focus is on the value of the federal government’s position in Intel after its August 2025 deal with the once-struggling company.
Under the August 2025 deal, the Trump administration agreed to purchase 433.3 million Intel shares at $20.47 per share, equal to about a 9.9% stake, valued at around $8.9 billion, funded largely by previously awarded but unpaid CHIPS Act and Secure Enclave grants.
According to Bloomberg, those 433.3 million Intel shares owned by taxpayers are now worth a staggering $36 billion, netting taxpayers a $27 billion paper gain.
President Trump told reporters on Thursday that Intel is now “coming back. All the chip companies are coming back.”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2026 – 09:55
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-govt-stake-intel-now-worth
Hungary’s Going Gay? TV Channel Dedicated To 24-hour LGBTQI Programs Will Soon Launch
Hungary’s Going Gay? TV Channel Dedicated To 24-hour LGBTQI Programs Will Soon Launch
Hungary will soon be getting a new government under Tisza’s Péter Magyar, but the landscape is already shifting, with a new LGBTQ-themed online television channel called “Rainbow” (“Szivárvány”) TV in the works to broadcast programs targeting the LGBTQI community 24 hours a day.
The entrepreneur behind the project, whose identity is being kept secret for now, reports Media1, but they have already submitted the necessary documents to the National Media and Communications Authority.
The channel will reportedly offer cultural programs, gastronomic content, and other shows about the history of the LGBTQI community. According to the owner, adult, 18+ content would be made available to subscribers exclusively in encrypted form, using appropriate technical protection.
And “special attention will be paid to the protection of children” and compliance with professional classification principles. This last is important, given Hungary’s child protection law, which has just recently been subject to a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union that the law “stigmatises and marginalises LGBTI+ persons.”
The CJEU essentially finds fault with the measure, not for seeking to protect children from homosexual propaganda but for associating non-cisgender people with convicted pedophiles. Specifically, it has ruled that it violates the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union due to the Charter’s “prohibition on discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation, respect for private
and family life, and the freedom of expression and information.”
The court also took issue with Hungary’s pedophile registry, stating that its scope of access was not strict enough to comply with GDPR regulations.
Brussels has demanded that Hungary drop this law, and with Péter Magyar now set to assume the role of prime minister, many are looking to see how far he will bend to the EU’s will. Having taken a landslide victory, including many conservative voters looking for change, Magyar has many groups of voters to please, leading some to believe many of his electorate are set to be disappointed.
Whatever the case, this new LGBTQI TV channel is most likely the first in many developments that part ways with the conservative Hungary envisioned by Viktor Orbán.
Along with a shift on LGBT issues, there are questions how long Magyar will hold out on mass immigration and other key issues, especially of the EU plans to play hardball with Hungary’s billions in frozen funds.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2026 – 09:20
Downtown Baltimore CRE Crash Signals Deeper Fiscal Crisis Ahead
Downtown Baltimore CRE Crash Signals Deeper Fiscal Crisis Ahead
A localized commercial real estate crash has been spreading through downtown Baltimore City’s office market like cancer, with more than $1 billion in property value erased since 2020. The rapid decline of the commercial tax base in the downtown area is colliding with deep structural crises, including violent crime, a continued population collapse (now at a 100-year low), fiscal mess, and the increasing risk that the unhinged left-wing politicians in City Hall will hike taxes on working poor households to offset the shortfall. What you’re seeing in Baltimore is a death spiral: capital leaves, residents follow, the tax burden shifts onto those who stay, and the cycle feeds on itself with no clear bottom in sight.
The Baltimore Sun, now owned by conservative David Smith (who also owns Sinclair Broadcasting), and Democrats in the state have become visibly angered that the paper is not producing left-wing propaganda as leftist Gov. Wes Moore’s polling data slides. Reports from the paper indicate that between 2020 and fiscal 2026, more than $1 billion in commercial property value has been erased, or about 29% of the city’s commercial properties – 4,085 out of 14,027 – saw their assessed values slashed on average by 28.7%.
“The pace of losses has been so sharp that officials have repeatedly issued out-of-cycle reassessments, rather than waiting for Maryland’s standard three-year review,” The Sun wrote in the report.
Downtown Baltimore is witnessing a troubling trend as businesses continue to close, leaving employees without jobs and residents without essential services.
The latest casualty is the Sheraton Hotel, a key fixture of the Inner Harbor, which has left 69 employees jobless.… pic.twitter.com/PagIL8uW9J
— FOX Baltimore (@FOXBaltimore) January 17, 2026
The steepest losses have been concentrated in Downtown, the Inner Harbor, and Downtown West:
Commercial property values in Downtown alone fell $496.3 million in assessed value over the last six years, while the Inner Harbor dropped $363.4 million and Downtown West lost $214.6 million — a combined decline of more than $1.07 billion across those three districts.
Some of the city’s most recognizable properties saw steep reductions: 100 Pratt Street E in the Inner Harbor lost $138.9 million in assessed value during that period, while 1 Light Street in Downtown dropped $87.3 million. Several other high-profile properties posted losses exceeding $40 million.
David Bramble, managing partner at MCB Real Estate, told the local paper that the downtown area of Baltimore is “experiencing massive value loss,” adding, “If this trend continues unabated, Baltimore will face even more serious financial hardship, impacting all its residents and businesses, from neighborhoods to the waterfront.”
The paper noted that city officials and business leaders said downtown’s commercial struggles stem not only from crime but also from the era of remote work.
“A lot of these workers are still working from home, at least a few days a week. T. Rowe Price might have a trader who, in 2018, went to the office five days a week. Now he’s coming in two or three days a week. As a result, the needed downtown office space is being downsized,” said Richard Clinch, executive director for the University of Baltimore’s Jacob France Institute.
While remote work is only part of the story, traders, wealth managers, and back-office staff at major financial institutions in the city are all saying the same thing: Baltimore’s crime problem has become intolerable and is bad for business.
Related:
Build It, And They Will Come? Not The Case At Baltimore’s Harbor East Luxury Tower
Maryland Dem Officials Freak Out At Journalists Ahead Of Exposé On Governor
Two Years Later, No Key Bridge As Maryland Dems Focus On Tampons In Men’s Bathrooms
Already starting to emerge:
D.C. Economy “Under Strain,” Faces Biggest Spending Cuts Since Great Recession
Baltimore’s epic demise is a direct consequence of decades of failed one-party Democratic rule that prioritized left-wing social justice experiments and other left-wing policies over public safety, economic competitiveness, and basic law and order. City leaders sold voters on a progressive utopia, but what they delivered instead was an exodus of residents, capital flight, a recession-like business environment, and years of crime and chaos.
A vice president of finance at a major institution in the city confirmed that failed left-wing leadership at City Hall has accelerated Baltimore’s death spiral.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2026 – 08:45
Ruthless Taxation And The Hyperstate: How Germany Profits From Crisis
Ruthless Taxation And The Hyperstate: How Germany Profits From Crisis
Submitted by Thomas Kolbe,
The Hormuz crisis offers us a profound insight into the real power structures in Germany. Nothing seems able to convince the Berlin monolith to partially shield its citizens from the consequences at gas stations through tax cuts.
It is now unavoidable that the Iran shock will translate into an inflation driver, working its way through economic value chains into consumer prices. These developments almost force a reduction of the tax burden on households and the middle class. It may sound strange to climate socialists, but wealth is created exclusively in the private sector, and certainly not in the state bureaucracy, which is currently profiting from the price surge at gas stations at the expense of citizens and enjoying a small special economic boost.
In March alone, the Finance Minister collected roughly half a billion euros more at gas stations. That makes him the winner of the crisis.
To dispel the impression of a secret profiteer, Klingbeil points to the generally precarious budget situation. In fact, his hands are essentially tied: the Merz-Klingbeil duo is driving the country’s public debt through the roof. Klingbeil is the skywalker among European debt makers. He has begun a catch-up race to place Germany in the top tier of debt states alongside neighboring France, Italy, and Spain. The German public debt ratio currently stands at 63 percent, but the debt spiral is accelerating. This figure will rise dramatically in the coming years.
Anybody should now be clear: The debt party of a state that burns its citizens’ capital in reckless fashion, whether in Ukraine or through the redistribution mechanism of the green transformation, must end. The state is an overfed glutton, extracting ever-higher tax revenues while sinking deeper into the debt spiral.
Yet the burden does not rest solely on debt. The state’s hyperactivity drains scarce resources from the private capital market, raises credit costs, and drives genuinely productive investments abroad. The damage has accumulated for years and is being made worse by the energy cost crisis.
One can only imagine the relief that the private sector needs to restart the prosperity engine and compensate for the ever-growing damage caused by the state bureaucracy. Germany’s plight urgently calls for reforms and an end to the failed eco-socialist transformation project.
In Germany, however, things are a little different. Economic rationality does not dominate. In the land of climate doomsayers and would-be world improvers, as former Economics Minister Robert Habeck once said, „all in“ — and all levers were set towards eco-socialism.
In fact: over 50 billion euros are pumped annually by the German state through the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF) into the green wonder economy, which during the Hormuz crisis proved not to solve problems but rather to be their obvious cause.
The green wonder economy is leaving deep wounds in public budgets, whose deficits are spiraling out of control – in this year alone, another 180 to 190 billion euros of new debt will likely be recorded. https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/staatsverschuldung-rekord/
No one in Berlin is thinking about tax cuts anymore, regardless of how media artists around Chancellor Friedrich Merz try to pacify the public.
Even in the unlikely event of a temporary reduction in the electricity tax or an increase in the commuter allowance, the fundamental extraction mechanism remains unchanged. The CO₂ trading system drained roughly 25 billion euros from the private sector last year. This figure will continue to grow annually. There is no reason for gratitude, even if Berlin returns a few crumbs of citizens’ money here and there — robbed is robbed!
It was the economists at RWI in Essen who calculated the Finance Minister’s crisis dividend for March. They arrived at a sum of 490 million euros.
It is beyond question that the state is acting unethically in this crisis, delaying relief and exploiting citizens’ financial hardship.
The RWI’s call to suspend VAT on fuels is entirely justified, but it was coldly rejected by the Finance Minister. With his characteristic empathy, Klingbeil pointed out that citizens had made savings elsewhere due to high fuel prices. VAT revenue there had decreased, so a reduction at the pump was out of the question.
Klingbeil is instead contemplating a so-called windfall tax, in which, in the spirit of central planners, he could also make gas station operators and oil companies pay in light of their high profits in these weeks.
Budgetary planning games in Germany revolve exclusively around higher levies. Considering a projected new debt of up to 4.5 percent this year — counting the hidden funds of special assets — it is clear that the country no longer represents a healthy state.
The political aim of the Merz-Klingbeil government is the establishment of a massive state apparatus, resting on two pillars: the green artificial economy on one side and the massively expanded military sector on the other. This goes hand in hand with a growing state share, which has long exceeded 50 percent, as well as with rising public debt. The private sector bears the brunt of this, through higher levies or later via rising inflation rates.
Everything follows a clearly defined script. Only the extent of Berlin’s cynicism in the face of these policy consequences sometimes still surprises.
The Environment Minister calls for switching to electric cars amid the fuel price crisis, while the Transport Minister recommends the exhausted citizens switch to the catastrophe train.
In addition, the state-aligned media sector no longer minces words, celebrating high fuel prices as a unique opportunity to enforce the green societal transformation through citizens’ wallets.
To emphasize once again: a reduction in fuel levies is not a political quick fix. It would mark the beginning of a retreat from climate policy and a return to political reason. Energy must be affordable, and the exploitation of domestic energy sources should be central to policy. Achieving this requires a lean state, giving private industry the room for necessary investments. What we are witnessing is the systematic implementation of the opposite of this policy.
In his first year in office, Chancellor Friedrich Merz managed the feat of expanding the public service by a staggering 205,000 new employees. There is no sign of bureaucracy reduction or scaling back the state apparatus.
The economic hemorrhage of the private sector to finance the machinations of the growing hyperstate, including projects like the failed war in Donbass, is unprecedented.
In Berlin, people still believe they can successfully complete the green transformation project. What is shocking is not the ideological blindness or the intellectual modesty that comes with this policy. One should have become accustomed to that since the years of the Merkel era.
Even more striking is the ability of politicians to completely shirk responsibility despite the visible decline of both economy and society. They have succeeded in elegantly severing causality between the green planned economy and the country’s decline, systematically concealing accountability and consequences.
About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2026 – 08:10
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/ruthless-taxation-and-hyperstate-how-germany-profits-crisis
Alleged Chinese Spy Ship Lurking Near U.S. Base In Qatar Raises Questions
Alleged Chinese Spy Ship Lurking Near U.S. Base In Qatar Raises Questions
The War Zone’s Ian Ellis posted on X about a suspicious Chinese vessel operating in the Gulf area, which he described as a “Chinese surveillance ship” with “close ties” to the People’s Liberation Army.
According to Ellis, Hai Yang Shi You (285) was moored not long ago, just 10 miles from U.S. assets, raising concerns about Chinese intelligence-gathering activity in the region amid the US-Iran conflict.
Chinese surveillance ship Hai Yang Shi You (285) got underway in the Gulf again, just before the ceasefire was set to expire.
The dual-use survey ship, with close ties to the PLA, rode out the ceasefire at port in Qatar, ~10 miles from U.S. assets forward-deployed at Al Udeid AB.
Chinese surveillance ship Hai Yang Shi You (285) got underway in the Gulf again, just before the ceasefire was set to expire. The dual-use survey ship, with close ties to the PLA, rode out the ceasefire at port in Qatar, ~10 miles from U.S. assets forward-deployed at Al Udeid AB. pic.twitter.com/krirNNa0uL
— Ian Ellis (@ianellisjones) April 24, 2026
The latest ship-tracking data from Bloomberg shows that Hai Yang Shi You (285) has transited around the Gulf region, particularly around Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, over the last 60 days.
Ellis wrote in a separate X post that he closely monitors “20 Chinese research and surveillance ships.”
The question becomes: What was the Hai Yang Shi You 285 doing just ten miles from U.S. assets forward-deployed at Al Udeid Air Base?
The next question is whether the ship assisted Iran in attacks on the base. These are just basic questions.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2026 – 07:35










