chooky
22hr ago
The stated reason for the war is to prevent Iran from acquiring the leverage of a nuclear bomb. Even once acquired, this is not the greatest leverage given that actually using it is somewhat problematic. Through the war, Iran has gained/discovered/confirmed very powerful conventional leverage in its ability to control the Strait of Hormuz. This is pretty bad! I am not really sure what the off-ramp is.
On the cost of economic disruption and more expensive oil, I would personally say that the various political gains you note in the Middle East are not worth it, especially in the big picture that the US has been weakened relative to China.
chooky
1d ago
I believe that the Iran war was incompetently conceived because of how badly it has gone!
chooky
1d ago
why is Kier Starmer easing the same sanctions?
Easing the sanctions is not the part that is so harmful to US/European interests; the conditions creating the need to ease the sanctions, i.e., the US-Iran war, are the part that is harmful to Western interests. Easing the sanctions is an understandable attempt to lessen the pain created by the Iran military action that has gone on far longer than planned and come with drastically larger consequences than planned.
The incompetent part is Trump's choice to embark on the Iranian adventure in the first place. I'm not really qualified to judge the competence of the operation itself, but it seems to me like Trump probably did not get great or blunt enough advice on this front.
chooky
1d ago
That's not what I am claiming at all. I am merely pointing out the comedy that there were few choices that would have simultaneously been so beneficial for Russia and so detrimental for the US and Europe. (Perhaps intervening on Ukraine's behalf could be considered more beneficial to Russia, but having that conflict settled wouls come with at least some Western benefits.)
My personal view is simply that Trump 2 is an extraordinarily incompetent administration.
chooky
2d ago
It does not strike me as at all plausible that a court case would have resulted in this decision. Is there a mechanism for a judge blocking it?
chooky
2d ago
Russia independently attempted to intercede in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf
This seems highly in line with conventional wisdom and official government findings. What is supposed to be controversial, the "independently" part?!
I can't think of a more "secretly in cahoots with Putin" move possible than invading Iran in 2026
As noted in a different reply, the obvious logic would be higher oil prices and the Strait of Hormuz closure creating higher oil prices for Russia and an impetus to ease sanctions on Russian oil, as indeed the US has done. Mostly joking, but I was also mostly joking a couple months ago (IRL, not on here) when I speculated that a hilarious consequence of the Iran war would probably be the US getting rid of sanctions on Russian oil. That US resources are tied up in Iran, leaving less logistic and budget room to support Ukraine, is icing on the cake, not to mention the seeming erosion of US face and soft power.
chooky
2d ago
Absolutely - it drastically raised oil prices and created reasons to ease sanctions on Russian oil. I would not recommend being Russia's ally.
chooky
2d ago
While I agree that Russia independently attempted to intercede in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf rather than in collusion, I can't think of a more "secretly in cahoots with Putin" move possible than invading Iran in 2026.
chooky
4d ago
By "programmed", do you mean conditioned via training or something like selected through breeding?
chooky
4d ago
GBG is awesome. My non-spoiler advice for enjoyment/depth is to keep in mind that it is explicitly narrated.
chooky
4d ago
[Did mixtapes ever exist?]
Hmm, while I am probably too young to have made mixtapes on cassette tapes, it is absolutely the case that people made lots of mixtapes for each other on CDs in the mp3 and CD-burning heyday. Perhaps this is to your point that music was incredibly expensive prior to being forced down by mp3 pirating (we can call it what it was while also acknowledging that the labels and artists deserved it). But I am pretty willing to take media's word that music nerds made each other mixtapes back in the day. What is kind of funny is that I do not really think people make playlists for each other today; it seems like it has gotten too cheap! (Though maybe I am too old now. What does happen is my wife texts me 20 different songs instead of making a playlist like I beg her to!)
On The Jesus and Mary Chain, I think it is quite possible to have been exposed to them via college radio (I still discover obscure things via college radio) or even a relatively alternative, err, alternative station. JMC has a few very melodic songs that could easily have been championed by DJs or older siblings.
chooky
7d ago
The US right now is bombing and killing accused drug traffickers by referring to them as terrorists. For what? For providing a substance that irresponsible people willingly choose to inject into themselves.
I'm not sure we should use the current US government's legal arguments as an example of conventional beliefs! Are European governments calling drug dealers terrorists in order to justify lethal, war-like force?
chooky
8d ago
It would reduce the expense by a lot. A huge part of the reason mainline public school performance per dollar looks bad is because of the immense cost of dealing with special ed kids, which private and charter schools get to avoid. Worse, the additional funding schools receive does not really cover the additional cost of special ed kids, so it also sucks resources away from mainstream. Even worse, the ubiquity of special ed has led to the toxic equilibrium of helicopter parents inventing reasons for their perfectly normal kids to receive accomodations (mostly special treatment like extra time on tests).
The contemporary interpretation of special ed law mandating schools do almost whatever it takes to put students in mainline classrooms is a really big problem.
chooky
11d ago
Surely you are not suggesting a run-of-the-mill president or "uniparty interventionist stooge" would have had Middle Eastern adventures on the scale of Trump?
Iran happening and going how it has gone was not in my worst-case Trump scenario either so I don't blame you for rolling those dice, but you very much lost a lot more money than you would have lost betting on a "uniparty" candidate.
chooky
14d ago
I stopped doing core at all once I started doing compounds above body weight. I think the compound itself does all the core you need.
At 1.8x deadlift, stuff like planks is just way too easy for your core now. You will need to do hanging leg raises or something.
chooky
17d ago
I think it is fairly obvious is the amount of people who received access to abortion per dollar. For a pro abortion activist, it is simply this access that is the good.
chooky
17d ago
But your examples are essentially taxpayers as the defraudee, if that is indeed occurring. It is a different beast when private donors feel defrauded, and the ROI on plane tickets for abortions is horrible.
chooky
18d ago
The dollar per case amounts here are really high here, which costs a lot of money and creates a lot of opportunity for fraud (i.e., free trip on the pretext of an abortion, or just cash in the plane tickets). Preventing this fraud would create a lot of work and create a degree of formality that would make it much easier to be sued/prosecuted.
Mailing the pills is a perfect solution.
chooky
25d ago
Don't several characters turn off their hormone implants or get them removed? It all seems very optional.
chooky
28d ago
The loss of cheap loans is also a very large part of current affordability issues.
chooky
28d ago
Nah, the goal is to salvage the best exit ramp possible. What I think this probably looks like is something like the return of JCPOA and Iran retaining control of the strait, which, I agree, sucks; hopefully we can do better! While I would like Trump to suffer a humiliating defeat in the abstract, I recognize that such a defeat would generally be tied to bad outcomes and thus very much do not want it to happen in the case of Iran. Far better would be for the SC to issue a ruling that completely smashes the administration's tariff rationale or something; a humiliating legal defeat on that issue would be a good outcome for the US, in my view, so I can root for that one unconditionally.
chooky
29d ago
I don't claim to be on the euphemism treadmill, which is also to say that my inside views of education and special ed are secondhand. I figured that "handicapped" was probably offensive too (and would have the same sort of exceasibe broadness problem as "retarded") but I decided that I needed some reasonably concise way to refer people whose brains have not developed in a way that provides full functionality.
chooky
29d ago
A concrete advantage of not using "retarded" at all is that it is a very, very broad word to use when referring to the mentally handicapped, which is also an unproductively broad term when the reality is that "retarded" people will have various forms of Down's, autism, etc. Rather than paint with an extremely broad brush, the current permitted usage of "exceptional" (which also frequently encompasses gifted students or anyone whose parents scams them into special privileges) is so obviously useless that it forces any real discussion to focus on the specifics of how an individual student's exceptionalism/handicap presents.
From an etymological perspective, "retarded" is very similar to "ritartando", which anyone who took a year of band recognizes as basically being Latin for "slow". In almost all cases, it is not accurate to describe a mentally handicapped student's learning as merely slower than other students'. While this is perhaps blunt, it is almost, in a sense, more fair, in that seeing a handicapped student as slow means that they are not fulfilling their potential, which in turn subtly puts more blame on them.
I don't really have a strong argument against the use of "retarded" to describe generally idiocy or to use it as a new slur to replace "gay" ("lame" is not nearly taboo enough to work), but there is a reasonably strong argument to dissociate it from the mentally handicapped. Most of the taboo status of "retarded" generally is probably just the education field's reasonably justified move away from it naturally spreading.
Since the negotiations on ending the conflict thus far have centered on the nuclear question, I see the nuclear issue as the Trump administration's primary motivation, especially given the 2025 strike on an Iranian nuclear facility, Trump ending JCPOA, and because the 2026 war began as the administration seemingly concluded that negotiations on this issue were not going well.
But, sure, this could be wrong - maybe it is a deranged plot between Trump and the Russians after all!
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