The fundamental problem with the #US strategy is that to win, they have to do many, complex things over a vast area.
All #Iran has to do is make a 25km wide strait (Hormuz) dangerous enough that shipping companies can’t get insurance to go through. They don’t even need to try and sink many ships.
This is worth reading as a neat summary of the #US #Israel #Iran conflict.
In short:
• Trump, the DOD and the State Department don’t agree on the aims or the plan
• Trump is more concerned with the midterms and therefore the price of oil ($88/bl as of now) may determine when the war ends.
I very much doubt these were still operational.
As a tower in #Kuwait city burns, fuel prices at the pump in the #USA are already significantly higher than they were a week ago.
Wow, well done #Italy!
An even more stark visualisation of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz.
❗️ War in the Middle East could lead to the collapse of the global economy -ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has almost completely stopped
◾️Over the past 24 hours,only 2 commercial vessels have passed through the Strait of Hormuz
📹Ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours
A map of oil tankers currently passing through the strait of #Hormuz. There are none. The number dropped to essentially zero on the 1st of March. How long until everyone starts to feel the effects?
What you're looking at is not a sunrise — it's the Russian LNG tanker ARCTIC METAGAZ (IMO 9243148) struck by a massive explosion in the Mediterranean this morning. Photographed by crew aboard a merchant vessel, via Vanguard Tech.
Presumably it was this potential deal that #Israel was pre-empting.
One reading of this situation is that #Israel has bounced the world’s largest military power into fighting a war on its behalf and taking on much of the risk.
Of course, the people of the Middle East are taking on most of it.
It’s only one poll of course, but it is quite astonishing nevertheless.
Perhaps coalition politics is on the cards?
❌ Iran closes its entire airspace.
🇺🇸 Al Jazeera: The United States is carrying out joint strikes with Israel.
💥 About 30 targets across Iran have been struck so far, including the Iranian President’s residence and an intelligence headquarters, Israeli reports claim.
And with that, England, despite playing rather poorly, have made it to the semis before anyone else and with a game to spare.
Oh, and Jofra has taken 8 in the power plays and is bowling at 93mph+
Don’t write us off yet.
Where does radioactive waste come from and what are the plans to manage it over timescales longer than human civilizations? ☢️ I chat with @bbcvic.bsky.social on BBC's Inside Science. Listen here to learn more: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... @sw-nuclearhub.bsky.social @cabot-institute.bsky.social
Helion, one of many #Fusion startups, is unusual in that it plans to use helium-3 in its magnetic confinement reactor (and is already refining the fuel). Its reactor is also different: it generates electricity directly from the magnetic field produced by the reaction.
techcrunch.com/2026/02/13/f...
Yet another #LLM update: this time, Google Gemini 3.1 Pro.
Continuing if modest improvements relative to benchmarks.
All the sunspots in 2025 (center image) and month by month around the edge. 2025 was the peak of the 11-year solar cycle, so things should calm down this year. Via NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and @apod.shinyakato.dev
The block 3 version of SpaceX's SuperHeavy Booster looks like it will be ready to launch in March, along with an updated version of Starship: arstechnica.com/space/2026/0....
It will use the V3 version of the Raptor engine, which looks a lot cleaner than the first two versions.
@isomorphiclabs.bsky.social Drug Design Engine (IsoDDE) improves on Alpha Fold 3 from Google Deep Mind across a range of benchmarks: critically, it is *much* better at predicting the shape of proteins when the sequences are far from those in the training set.
www.isomorphiclabs.com/articles/the...
I’m happy to say that no less than two of the five great women scientists on this list are in the #Petrology Group at the School of Earth Sciences @bristoluni.bsky.social!
I’m glad England won, of course, but Nepal thoroughly deserved to be as close as they were. It took excellent bowling by Curran and Dawson to stop them. This was the key moment.
Long story short: the ‘promising hints’ are in fact not very promising.
But please read @chrislintott.bsky.social’s thread: great context, healthy skepticism, plus plenty of enthusiasm! Questionable results are still interesting.
Meanwhile, in #Austin, #Texas, still the only place you can get a #Tesla #Robotaxi, further bad news. Especially given that Robotaxi, alongside the #Optimus humanoid robot, was supposed to drive growth at Tesla (and presumably make up for lost sales of its cars).
electrek.co/2026/01/29/t...
While #xAI and #SpaceX merge, #Tesla is being left to rot it seems. Sales are down (again) by 44% across five #EU countries: #France, #Norway, #Sweden, #Denmark and the #Netherlands
electrek.co/2026/02/02/t...
@waymo.bsky.social raised $16B at a $126B valuation, the largest funding round in history for an autonomous vehicle company. The funding will support expansion to more than 20 new cities in 2026, including international launches in #London and #Tokyo.
More here: electrek.co/2026/02/02/w...
We are, apparently, only in the early stages of the coming wave of #AI #datacenters.
Some could consume more power than entire cities.
But how much of this will actually be built?
Given each GW costs ~$35B, where will the money, and power, come from?
Really interesting insights from epoch.ai
I wonder if the $230B valuation of #xAI implied by the terms of its merger with #SpaceX take into account potential future court costs over #Grok?
Elon Musk on the merger between #SpaceX and #xAI: “This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!”
Meanwhile, on Earth:
NGC55: a galaxy of nebulas
via @apod.shinyakato.dev
