Aggregator

It’s hard to root for the resuscitation of the genre when we get formulaic stuff like this.

CEO Saves His Failing Company By Firing Entire HR Department

When Elon Musk purchased Twitter and took the company over in 2022, he proceeded to fire approximately 80% of the social media company's bloated 7500 person workforce.  This included almost all HR related employees.  The company roster was pared down to a lean 1500 people.  Everyone in the establishment media claimed that Twitter (now called "X") was going to collapse. 

The political left and their corporate allies did everything in their power to make this happen, including advertising cancellations and even government intervention, but they failed.  X's monthly active user (MAU) count has grown over the past 5 years - rising from roughly 360 million in 2021 to over 550 million by early 2026.  Part of the reason for this success despite the constant attacks was Musk's removal of internal saboteurs. 

The majority of corporations today have inflated their teams with people who do not add value - Rather, they create problems from thin air and drag the company down.  The primary vehicle that facilitates this sabotage is the Human Resources department. 

HR departments were originally created as a means of monitoring compliance with state and federal laws to avoid liability.  In many cases this revolved around "sexual harassment" or "discrimination" in the workplace, but it ended up becoming a progressive crusade to make women, LGBT and minority groups a protected class of workers that are difficult to fire because HR is more concerned with lawsuits. 

This lack of accountability based on gender and minority privilege reached its peak during the height of the woke era and DEI.  Companies were rife with useless employees who did little work while raking in six-figure salaries. 

Today, the situation is changing rapidly.  A wave of layoffs has hit the white collar sector since 2025.  The end of DEI is leading to mass cuts which are largely affecting women, with minority women making up the bulk of the job losses. 

One company CEO, Ryan Breslow of Bolt, saved his company from implosion by a simple change which allowed him to more easily make a number of other changes:  He fired his entire HR department. 

Breslow, who stepped down as CEO in 2022 but returned in 2025, cut 30% of the workforce in April and replaced HR with a smaller “people operations” team focused on training.  “They were creating problems that didn’t exist,” Breslow, 31, said at Fortune’s Workforce Innovation Summit. “Those problems disappeared when I let them go.”

Bolt was founded in 2014 and makes checkout payments technology. The company saw a whopping valuation collapse from $11 billion in 2022 to $300 million in 2025.

But HR wasn’t the only group to lose their jobs. Breslow said employees had grown complacent during the boom years. He gave workers 60 days to adapt to a leaner culture but said 99% couldn’t make the shift. “There’s a sense of entitlement that had festered across the company,” he said.

He fired nearly the entire leadership team and eliminated four-day workweeks and unlimited PTO.  Bolt now operates with about 100 employees, down from thousands. “We have a team a quarter of the size, who are much more junior, who work a lot harder, who have better energy,” Breslow says.

The CEO's observations echo across the corporate world in the US and in Europe, and it's the reason why many DEI related jobs are disappearing and why so many college graduates with psychology and communications related degrees can't get hired to save their lives.

It makes sense; Human Resource employees are 75% to 80% women and 18% LGBT, far above the averages in most white collar fields.  These demographics commonly lead to a grievance-based work environment and an entitlement culture.  These are the groups who often create problems from thin air as a means to manipulate the policy courses of companies and they are difficult to eject because of liability fears. 

Placing them in a position of power with the ability to drum up internal conflicts is a detrimental mistake. 

Time, however, is healing.  The era of easy salaries for low value employees is quickly coming to an end.  Numerous tech companies and venture capital companies that expanded during the last decade are cutting the dead weight.  The viral TikToks of women spending most of their workday in corporate cafeterias and yoga rooms are disappearing.  The free ride is over, and soon there may not be any HR department's left to protect the barnacles from being scraped off the ship.      

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/22/2026 - 18:00

New York’s most popular baby names of the year show a swing back to old-timey and "traditional" classics — possibly as a reaction to having such an unorthodox mayor rise to power, an expert told the post Friday.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani broke with his far‑left DSA base on Wednesday — and delivered a win for police unions by supporting legislation that would allow NYPD pensions to be padded and bump up the retirement age for most officers.

The two pit bulls have been seized by the sheriff’s office's animal control services but no arrests have been made, according to WESH 2 News. 

Trevor Story is going to be out for a while. 

Japan To Welcome First Crude Cargo Via Hormuz Since War Began

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

A supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude is set to arrive in Japan early next week after clearing the Strait of Hormuz in late April, in the first shipment of Middle East crude to Japan via the chokepoint since the Iran war began on February 28.

The Idemitsu Maru very large crude tanker; Photo: MarineTraffic

The very large crude carrier (VLCC) Idemitsu Maru, which had departed from Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura port in the Persian Gulf in mid-March, is expected to arrive in Nagoya on May 25, data on MarineTraffic showed. As of early Friday, the supertanker was close to the coasts of Japan.

The cargo is destined for the Aichi refinery of local refiner Idemitsu Kosan, according to a briefing document of Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry cited by Bloomberg.

The imminent shipment will mark the first cargo from the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz to have made it to Japan since the conflict erupted at the end of February and halted most energy supplies via the strait, which is blocked by Iran and separately blockaded by the U.S. in the Gulf of Oman to prevent Iranian oil exports.

Another Japan-bound tanker, Eneos Endeavor, cleared the Strait of Hormuz last week. The Eneos Endeavor, currently in the Malacca Strait, is expected to arrive in Kiire, Japan, on May 30, per data on MarineTraffic. It departed from Mina Al Ahmadi in Kuwait on February 28, the day on which hostilities began.

Meanwhile, Japan in April imported the lowest volume of crude oil from the Middle East on record dating back to 1979 as the Iran war and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz choked supply from the region.

Japan’s crude imports from the Middle East plummeted by 67.2% in April compared to the same month of 2025, provisional trade data from Japan’s Finance Ministry showed on Thursday.

Since the war in the Middle East began, Japan has scrambled to secure crude oil supply from alternative sources and released stocks from reserves as its dependence on crude from the Middle East passing through Hormuz was more than 90% of all crude imports

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/22/2026 - 17:40

Donald Trump sees big things for Jaxson Dart.

The image went from snatched to stretched.

Maye Musk reacted by recounting her own lengthy green card process as a Canadian immigrant.

Researchers hope the work will help identify affordable, effective drugs to treat conditions like MND.

“It’s taken all the time that i’ve been given, up until now, to realize what a gift everything is.”

That isn't very sportsmanlike.

The YouTuber said he and his wife were "soaking up the time we still have with our boy" before their son's death Thursday.

The YouTuber said he and his wife were "soaking up the time we still have with our boy" before their son's death Thursday.

Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen couldn't help but laugh while sharing a Hailee Steinfeld pet peeve.

Retired Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward made a brief appearance on the "America’s Newsroom" program on Tuesday to discuss the ongoing war with Iran with Fox hosts Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino.

Two Waymos imprisoned this California driver in her car earlier this week, forcing her to call the police to help her — as the robocars face a freeway reckoning.

Get ready to red, white and do.

China Restricts Fentanyl Precursor Chemical Exports To North America After Trump-Xi Talks

One week after President Donald Trump's China summit with President Xi Jinping, where the two superpower leaders focused on issues ranging from bilateral trade to the Hormuz chokepoint, there appears to be measurable progress on one key 'MAGA' issue: the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals into North America.

Bloomberg reports Friday morning that China imposed new export controls on three chemical compounds shipped to the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, targeting key precursor ingredients used to make fentanyl.

Beijing's announcement now requires special export licenses for the restricted chemicals and signals growing cooperation between Xi and Trump on narcotics enforcement.

"The Presidents also highlighted the need to build on progress in ending the flow of fentanyl precursors into the United States, as well as increasing Chinese purchases of American agricultural products," the White House wrote in a readout of the summit last week.

The Trump team continues to maintain a 10% tariff on Chinese imports tied to Beijing's years of failure to stop the flow of fentanyl precursor exports into North America.

Beijing has dismissed Washington's accusations over the opioid epidemic that, at one point, was killing 100,000 Americans every year.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated early in Trump's second term that Beijing may be "deliberately" flooding America with fentanyl in a "reverse" form of the mid-1800s Opium Wars that weakened China's international standing.

Ahead of Trump's trip last week, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine spoke with White House Counterterrorism Director Sebastian Gorka about how China weaponized fentanyl to weaken America from within.

"They see our 'city on a hill' as the newest version of the British Empire, and it is now payback time for the Opium Wars," Gorka said. "Many have said that, and I think there is something to that.

Here's the fentanyl supply chain: Chinese chemical suppliers → Mexican cartels → fentanyl production in Mexico → smuggling into the U.S.

Between 2015 and 2024, the U.S. recorded about 815,100 drug overdose deaths, a death toll larger than many U.S. wars combined. And, in fact, China didn't even have to fire a shot.

Simultaneously, while the drug epidemic fueled by cartels and China-sourced precursor chemicals ravaged communities and cities nationwide, Democratic-led cities accelerated the crisis by pushing forward with nation-killing progressive policies that enabled open-air drug markets, weakened enforcement, and allowed the public-health emergency to spread. Why?

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/22/2026 - 17:20