🚨 BESSENT JUST SHUT THE DOOR Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent filed new IRS rules that stop illegal aliens from collecting refundable tax credits meant for Americans. No more free money for people who aren’t even supposed to be here. American taxpayers first. Period.

Landon Patterson (‘28 TX) out of the ‘pen to shut the door with 2 innings. FB worked 80-86 T87 w/ loose arm. Paired it with a short SL 75-79 that got s/m down in the zone, collected 3Ks in this outing. #SouthChamp# @PG_Uncommitted

Cybercab is a much better experience than a Model Y @Robotaxi. You hop in after the doors swing up and, at your destination, hop out and walk away. By the time you're on the sidewalk and turn around, the doors are swinging down and the car leaves for the next customer. No need to shut the doors—just hop out and walk away.

SAUDI ARABIA SPENT 5 MONTHS BUILDING AN ESCAPE ROUTE FROM IRAN. THE HOUTHIS JUST CLOSED IT. When Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia didn't panic. It rerouted oil 1,200 kilometers overland through the East-West Pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, sacrificing natural-gas-liquids revenue to push capacity from 5 million to 7 million barrels a day. It’s actually a genuine engineering and economic achievement, built in months, designed to make the kingdom's oil exports untouchable by Iran. This week, the Houthis put a spanner in the works. THE SQUEEZE On July 20, Yemen's Houthi movement declared a full naval blockade of Saudi Arabia and struck two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. By Friday, they hit the source directly: missiles and drones on Aramco's Jizan refinery, and a simultaneous strike on the Yanbu export terminal, the exact port the kingdom built its Hormuz workaround around. NASA's satellite fire-detection system confirmed multiple thermal anomalies at Jizan at 1:17am UTC. Brent crude broke back above $100 a barrel within hours. Here's the part that makes this more than another rocket over the Red Sea: every barrel Yanbu loads still has to exit through the Bab al-Mandeb strait to reach open water. Iran controls the door on one side of the peninsula. The Houthis, backed by Iran, now threaten the only other one. WHO SAYS WHAT Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree framed it as retaliation, not initiation, accusing Saudi of "escalation" after Saudi strikes on Hodeidah, and vowing to answer "escalation with escalation." Yemen's government says the Houthis are using the strait "to serve Iran's regional agenda and strengthen Tehran's negotiating position" The Houthis have a real grievance, a blockade Riyadh has enforced on Yemen for over a decade, and Iran has a real interest in every additional lever it can pull on Saudi Arabia while its own war with Washington grinds on. FLIP THE SEATS Picture the Saudi energy ministry official who spent five months and real money solving the Hormuz problem, converting NGL infrastructure, pushing throughput past design limits, briefing the world that the kingdom had insulated itself from Iranian leverage. Now picture that same person watching satellite footage of Yanbu-bound crude burning at the refinery gate, in a port they specifically chose because it wasn't supposed to be anyone's chokepoint. The lesson isn't that the pipeline was badly planned. It's that in a region with this many armed, motivated actors, there is no single fix. THE BIGGER PATTERN This isn't the tidy version of multipolarity, a single rising bloc calmly displacing a single declining hegemon. It's messier than that, and more honest: when no one power can fully guarantee the safety of the world's oil, the number of actors who can threaten it doesn't shrink to two. It grows. Iran doesn't need to personally close both routes. It just needs an ally willing to close the second one for its own reasons, at the moment that reinforces Iran's position most. The Unipolar Order is discovering it never had as many fronts covered as it thought. Saudi Arabia will likely find a third route eventually. The question worth sitting with is how long the kingdom, the world and the price of gas everywhere can survive the search.

LET YOUR TEENAGER'S ROOM BE A DISASTER?? Smart parenting, or raising a slob? A guy says parents should leave their teenager's room alone. Keep the kitchen and living room clean, but their room is their space. Shut the door, and only step in once it starts to smell. I can see where he's coming from. At some point you have to stop running every corner of their life, or they leave home with no clue how to run their own. Picking your battles is real, and the bedroom might not be the hill. But I'm not sold. A bedroom is where the daily habits get built. If you never have to make your bed at 15, I don't know why you'd suddenly start at 25 with a roommate and a lease. With two little guys at home I'm a few years away from this exact fight, and I already know my answer. Paint the walls whatever color you want. The dirty clothes still go in the hamper. Your room, my roof.

LA Unified blocked all student access to AI on district devices this school year. 429,000 students. New York City did the same thing a day earlier, but only through grade 8. LA covered every grade. The strange part is nobody knew. It started at the beginning of the school year and wasn’t made public until Wednesday. Board member Kelly Gonez found out at the meeting. Before this, students 13 and over could use approved tools after a digital citizenship course. The interim CIO also said activity on personal devices can be tracked if the student is logged into a district account. Their committee doesn’t report back with an actual policy until the end of the school year. Education was supposed to be a huge market for these companies. The two biggest districts in America shut the door in the same week…

Zero sales on the old page. Three on the new one. I did not see that coming. My AI video editor turned our conference footage into speaker videos and testimonial videos. Jon's first reaction: "Those look like they were professionally done." Then I tried something on our sales page. The moment you land on it, a video starts playing. We split-tested it against the old page. Jon brought the early data. Less than 150 people between the two pages. The old page: zero sales. The video page: three. "Shut the front door." Visits to the checkout page were up 251%. Jon admitted it's probably the lowest conversion rate we've ever called a test on. We're calling it anyway, and testing a different headline next. Jessica's take on why it works: the video at the top grabs your attention right away and sells the entire experience of the conference. Does video sell you on an event? Reply "Yes" or "No" and tell me why. 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #SplitTesting# #VideoMarketing#