Strait Crooked

I truly do not think Trump had no plan about the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. He knew Iran would shut it down, and I believe his inaction there was deliberate.

Trump is not a genius (quite the opposite), but he is strategic, and he is revenge-driven.

The US could’ve easily kept the Strait of Hormuz open by enough prep in advance. Not doing so was a choice. A poor choice, a misguided one, but a choice nonetheless. And the point of that choice was making our allies look bad, embararasing them, and inflicting pain on the rest of the world for their lack of support (or for being rivals, like China) for our actions in Iran.

Remember, the US is energy self-sufficient now1 and we cannot even refine the oil that comes out of Iran. Our oil infra is not set up for it at all.

Though I do not believe attacking Iran as we did was the best choice, I don’t care even a little what happens to the mullahs there, and they were likely getting pretty close to having a working nuclear weapon (unlike Iraq back in 2003). This would’ve been bad for everyone, but far more so for the rest of the Middle East and Europe.

Thus, the closing of the Strait was Trump’s revenge on those who did nothing to assist in an action that directly benefited them — i.e., significantly degrading Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The rest is just noise.

  1. Yes, yes, I know oil is a global market and gas prices rise everywhere, yada yada….

Get Out

I am 100% in support of every illegal alien being immediately deported.

That’s the bare minimum. I don’t approve of ICE’s methods, but the end goal is fine; it’s exactly what any place that calls itself a “nation” should be doing.

Once Normal

Is it normal to not be offended by men loving my skin tone?

This sort of thing used to be normal — that is, appreciating people for who and what they are. Then a ton of pseudo-feminist PMC liberal women got in a snit and let their intrasexual competition go fucking wild. That led to them declaring everything that was obvious about anyone being “offensive” to admire, especially if it wasn’t you admiring them only.

Then we passed those horrible norms down to Gen Z and mental health-wise screwed them over for life.

Not great.

The Cognitive Dark Forest.

ChatGPT Won't Let You Type Until Cloudflare Reads Your React State. I Decrypted the Program That Does It.

The Deceptively Tricky Art of Designing a Steering Wheel.

Painful Side Effect of Statins Explained After Decades of Mystery.

Courts are finally punishing Big Tech for harming kids. Hereโ€™s the catch.

The other signalling theory of wokeness.

The U.S. Will Require Travelers From 50 Countries to Pay Up to $15,000 to Visitโ€”What to Know.

Euthanasia evangelists are coming for the young.

In fact, failing to actively manage your country's demographics is a governance FAILURE.

The evolution of Redditโ€™s content policy is evidence of the third process of the EUโ€™s concentrated effort to socialize American tech platforms to its own conception of human rights and hate speech, to remarkable success.

In Ukraine, ground robots are increasingly going on the offensive.

This friendly robot just installed 100 MW of solar power. This was “impossible” a decade ago.

Soldiers Issued Crocs So Trump Can Say He Didn't Put Boots On The Ground.

Black Half Of Tiger Woods Tased By Cops After Asian Half Crashes Car.

European allies say Russia is helping Iran more than the U.S. has acknowledged, sources say.

Bayesian analysis of the probable origins of Covid.

Invasion Evasion

I remember that too. Then the idiot left would trot out a single photo of a refugee woman1 and say, “But some of them are women!” Never mind that letting 9 gazillion fighting-age gang-raping males into your country is a terrible idea even if there is one woman among them.

  1. Usually not even from the same year, or even decade.

Have Nuke

I expect the UK and most of Western Europe to be fully Islamicized by 2100. This will cause non-Islamic people of all races to retreat to non-Islamicized countries: Poland, Hungary, the Baltics (if Russia doesn’t take them), as well as the US if it’s still standing.

The nutters will then have French and UK nuclear weapons which will not be ideal. My guess is they will use them.

As oil prices rise, airfares are surging and some airlines might not survive.

Itโ€™s not just vaccines โ€” parents are refusing other routine preventive care for newborns. There’s stupid. And then there is whatever this is.

Human brain operates near, but not at, the critical point.

Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics in the lab.

How to Lose Tenure with One Sentence.

How a war in the Middle East is hiking your mortgage rate in America.

These ants navigate with a newly discovered โ€˜Moon compassโ€™.

A Knock on the Window and a Glimpse of Americaโ€™s Surveillance Future.

Why Russia Is Stepping Up Its Support for an Embattled Iran.

Everyone Hates iPhone Autocorrect. An Update Fixes One of the Biggest Problems.

Pretending

Canada has no politics of its own. From what I can see, 90% of Canada’s politics is either people being angry that they aren’t Americans (Ian Welsh et al.), or angry because they are too much like America and don’t want to be.

The other 10% is just people upset because they are so close to America, but falling drastically behind due to self-caused issues. Canada is a pretend country that can’t defend itself and is rapidly self-destructing.